From Nashville to Harrison Mills, in Logan County, Ky., is fully fifty miles across country. Horseback was the only mode of travel through the new country then, but a ride of fifty miles a day, used to horseback as they were, and riding such horses as he rode, was no unusual thing for him. [Illustration: The Sulphur Spring—“The Great French Lick,” as it appears to-day on Cherry Street, Nashville. Quere: What would the buffalo and hunters of old have thought of that thing in their day, with a negro in the tower? (Photo March, 1906, by E. E. Sweetland.)] Dickinson arose Thursday morning before day. His young wife was sleeping by his side and knew nothing of it. He dressed then awakened her and kissed her with more than usual tenderness: “Good-bye, darling. I shall be sure to be home to-morrow night.” “Where are you going?” she asked, surprised. “Oh, just over into Kentucky on a little matter of business. I will be back to-morrow night.” He started out, but she called him back and kissed him again. He laughed boyishly, recklessly at the look of doubt and fear that had crept into her eyes for she had heard rumors only of what the whole town knew, but it never occurred to her that the tragedy was so near. It was a gay, rollicking crowd of a half-dozen young men who joined Dickinson for his ride across two counties to Kentucky. Never was a more hilarious party. They took short cuts. They galloped across dangerous places, displaying horsemanship and nerve. They drank and made the woods echo with their shouts. Before he left Nashville, Dickinson had bet $500 that he would kill his man—that he would put his ball within a half-inch of the coat button over Jackson’s heart. When they stopped for dinner, he amused the crowd with his wonderful marksmanship. He tied a string between two trees and three times he cut it in twain with his pistol ball. At twenty-four feet he put four bullets in a spot no larger than a silver dollar. “When General Jackson comes along here,” he said to the landlord of the little eating house, “show him these.” He thought to weaken Jackson’s nerve, but little did he realize the real nerve of the man who was afterwards to send to death and defeat the troops that conquered Bonaparte.