The capacity of the Harper's Ferry armory was from fifteen hundred to two thousand guns a month, and the muskets and rifles manufactured there were, generally, considered the best in the world. A good deal has been heard of the needle-gun, the Chassepot and other guns used by various nations, which may be all that is claimed for them, but the Harper's Ferry Rifle Yerger enjoyed in its day a reputation second to no weapon of the small arms kind under the sun, and it is very doubtful if it will be much excelled hereafter, notwithstanding the many improvements we hear of year after year. In the war of the rebellion it went by the name of the Mississippi Rifle because the troops of that state were the first of the Confederates to be armed with it. CHAPTER IV. THE BROWN RAID. In the summer of 1859, a party of strangers made their appearance at Sandy Hook, a small village of Washington county, Maryland, in the immediate vicinity of Harper's Ferry. With them was an old man of venerable appearance and austere demeanor who called himself Isaac Smith. They represented themselves as being prospecting for minerals, and they took frequent and long rambles, with this ostensible purpose, over the various peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Since the first settlement of Harper's Ferry, it has been believed that, in the earth beneath the wild crags of the Maryland and Loudoun Heights, mines of different metals and of fabulous value are hidden, awaiting the eye of science and the hand of industry to discover and develop them. Many of the citizens of the place, from time to time, have supposed that they had found them and no small excitement has been aroused on this account by sanguine explorers. Specimens of different kinds of valuable ore or what was supposed to be such, were sent to Boston and subjected to chemical analysis and very favorable reports were returned by the most eminent chemists and geologists of the Athens of America. No wonder was felt, therefore, at the appearance of the party, and their expedition over the tortuous and difficult paths of the mountains excited no suspicion. At first, they boarded at the house of Mr. Ormond Butler, where their conduct was unexceptionable. They paid in gold for whatever they purchased and, as their manners were courteous to all, they were, on the whole, very much liked by Mr. Butler's family and his guests. After a week's stay at Sandy Hook, they removed to what is known as "the Kennedy Farm" about five miles from Harper's Ferry, on the Maryland side of the Potomac, where they established their headquarters. While at this place, Smith and his party, of whom three were his sons, made themselves very agreeable to their neighbors and they were as popular there as they had been at Sandy Hook. The father was regarded as a man of stern morality, devoted to church exercises, and the sons, with the others of the party, as good-natured, amiable, young men. Thus things