Nor was Lawless the only victim of their violence. An agent of the American Bible Society, Rev. D. H. Wheeler, was taken from his house and murdered after the same fashion as Lawless. Rev. Wm. J. Ferguson, also, a preacher of the Methodist denomination, was torn from the arms of his wife and daughter, and met the same fate as Lawless and Wheeler. Not satisfied with murdering these harmless persons, the brutal soldiers of Carrera had robbed them of their clothes and thrown their naked bodies, like dogs, into the public places. And in the house where Father Rossiter was quartered, a crime even darker still was committed by the followers of Zavala. When the Guatemalan troops entered the town the children of an Englishman, who had lately arrived at Granada from New-York, were seated at dinner. The group at the table consisted of a boy six years old, two girls one four and the other two years old, and their nurse. A soldier passing by the window pointed his musket at the innocent party, and firing deliberately, killed the boy instantly. The nurse saved the girls by flight to the next house, while the soldiers were forcing the doors and windows of the room, where the dead boy lay. These injuries were done to persons claiming the protection of the American flag; but that flag itself was the scoff and scorn of the soldiers an unlettered savage had let loose on the plains of Nicaragua. The American Minister, when the Allies attacked the town, lay nigh unto death from the effects of a sudden illness, which had seized him a few days previously. The ladies and other non-combatants had been sent to the Minister’s house at the first moment of alarm; but it was well that a small body of riflemen was also sent to protect them. The Minister was not in a condition to take charge of the helpless persons at his house; but his flag was waving its ample folds in front of the door, and this was deemed sufficient protection from the Guatemalans. When the enemy, however, got possession of the houses near the American legation, they began firing at the “star-spangled banner,” and called on Mr. Wheeler to come forth into the street. All the choice phrases of Spanish ribaldry were poured over the name of the _Ministro filibustero_—the filibuster Minister; and no epithet of hatred or contempt for the race of the North was left unuttered by the old Legitimists of Granada. It was well for Mr. Wheeler that the American Secretary of State about this time gave him leave to return to Washington in order to report the condition of affairs in Nicaragua—a civil way of telling the Minister his government had no further need of his services.