The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1895-08-18

Such place is not unfriendly to the for
nation of plots which seems to llnger In
fact as we'll as in fiction along the water
WAYS of seaport towns as well as along
the banks of the Thames. Whatever
luminousness there might have been here
from the religious principles and lntelil.
gence of the better order of citizens, still
one cannot walk down front street at
mid night without feeling a certain shaft
of secrecy and evil doing which is made
to pervade somehow the whole commu-
nifty. This front street is where all these
conspirators went about by day and
by night concealing themselves at
all hours in the shawods of the
shanties so convenient to flight
at the sound if necessary. Mr..
Hassell made little noise as he moved up
and down this so called street for the
last eight or ten years and in front of al
most little rookery, where there was a
sign on which was painted doctor Del
amar's Drug Store there usually sat a
quiet, weazen little man, uncanny look
ing, if he happened to look at you as
you passed by, (Which was highly i'm
probable) for, he seemed to prefer the
lonliness of his own thoughts or perhaps
better of his own indisposition towards
activity of any kind. Dressed indiffer-
emily with carpet slippers, weighing
ninety or a hundred pounds, with one OF
his little thin legs Tapped over the other,
be kept this little store with no assist
ant, looking up when would go across
the field to his home, and having few
words with anyone. Now and then he
would look up dreamily when addressed
and it did not take a practiced eye to
see the touch of mystery that had been
put there by some drug habit,
and the neighbors about all say
it was opium. In this little
store it was that he signed those false
medical examinations, and probably con-
cocted that bottle of bremidia which. Mr..
Samuel Williams may or may not have
given to his wife Sereda in imprudent
doses Just around the corner was a row
of single story shanties, in the first of
which Noe, Delamar Il Co., Insurance
Agents, did their business In the next
shop Mr.. David Parker, sleek, stout
looking negro, kept barber shop. In
the next Bill Fisher, so much depended
upon kept bis eating house. And in the
next Silas Blount, black, shiny black,
side whlskered and dressy, kept his little
general store Abe Wigfall moved easily
from shop to shop among these co-work-
ers. And so it was that when his brother
Jim Wigfall died it was not matter of
many moments it was not long before
Silas Blount, Dave Parker and Frank
Gibble, who has recently developed into
a y-reader for the Episcopal church at
two hundred dollars per year, took the
train for Newbern in order to draw the
three thousand dollars. Abe W1gfall did
not go but was represented, as he said,
by one of the others, as his ''guardeen. "
The theory of Mr.. Hinsdale in his speech
before the Justices was that they went
together because all three were afraid to
trust anyone alone with this stake which
had come as final joy to their concerted
efforts. So they went into room owned
by Sam Jackson at Newborn, divided
their loot and came back to the little
rookeries of front street where no doubt
many suppressed chuckle gave interest
to the conference that probably soon fol-
lowed between them. The whole place
seems to be asleep and still except
when it is disturbed by the
laments of the sea-storm and by the
sounds of pleasure that are brought by
Northern winter visitors and by summer
bathers. There is an old graveyard
canopied with moss, much like that at
Bonayenture, near Savannah, Ga,
which dates back nearly to seventeen
hundred, and just in sight is old Fort
Macon, ruin of thirty years, though it
looks as if it had hundred years of
age. The final shot that reduced it lies
there now encysted among iYies and
ferns and wild grasses and there is a
stencil that comes up from the interior,
where in 1868, fort full Of Confeder-
ates strove for eight hours against the
shells of the enemy from land and from
sea.
In the midst of such surroundings the
people told of in this tory have carried
on their crime for all these years, and it
remains to be developed whether at the
trial in October there may not be added
to them as defendants the names also of
others who are more respectable, and
who have been furnishing for all this
time the premiums on the hundred thous
and dollars and more of policies that
have been issued upon their ignorant
subjects 1t is safe to say, however, that
there will Re additional developments,
some CT which are expected to be sensa-
tional. Meanwhile the conspirators are
under what are considered safe bonds.
W. E. CHRISTIAN.