In the autumn of eighteen hundred and twenty, information was brought to the settlement, that a store at Springfield (as it is now called), had been entered and robbed--that the leaders of the desperadoes above alluded to, were suspected--and that the goods stolen were believed to be concealed in Cutler's grove, where they lived. Warrants were issued, and the three were arrested; but the magistrate before whom they were taken for examination, was a timid and ignorant man; and by the interference of Cutler, who assumed to be a lawyer, they were examined separately, and allowed to testify, each for the other! An officer who knew no more than to permit this, of course could do no less than discharge them. The arrest and examination, however, crude and informal as they were, confirmed the suspicions of the citizens, and directed them, more vehemently than ever, against Cutler, as well as his friends. It satisfied them, moreover, that they would never be able to reach these men through the ordinary forms of law, and strengthened the counsels of those who had already suggested the organization of a company of regulators. While these things were fermenting in the minds of the people, the desperadoes, encouraged by their success, and rendered bold by impunity, committed their depredations more frequently and openly than ever. It was remarked, too, that Cutler, having committed himself at the examination of friends, was now more constantly and avowedly their associate; and, since he was not a man to play a second part, that they deferred to him on all occasions, never moving without him, and treating him at all times as an acknowledged leader. The people observed, moreover, that from being, like his neighbors, a small farmer of limited possessions, he rose rapidly to what, on the frontier, was considered affluence. He soon ceased to labor on his lands, and set up a very considerable "store," importing his goods from Saint Louis, and, by means of the whiskey he sold, collecting all the idle and vicious of the settlement constantly about him. His "store" was in exceedingly bad repute, and the scanty reputation which he had retained after the public part he had taken before the magistrate, was speedily lost. Things were in this state in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty-one, when an old gentleman of respectable appearance, who had emigrated to this country by water, having been pleased with the land in the neighborhood of the place where the town of Naples now stands, landed his family and effects, and settled upon the "bottom." It was soon rumored in the settlement, that he had brought with him a large amount of money; and it was also remarked that Cutler and his three companions were constantly with him, either at the "Grove" or on the "bottom." Whether the rumor was the cause of their attention, or their assiduity the foundation of the report, the reader must determine for himself.