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when Scoby approached him stealthly from the rear, and struck him over the head with his hoe, felling him to the earth and marking his skull very severely. The cuts on Scoby's head were made by a woman the night previous, into whose house he was attempting to break. Joe Randolf who is an old man with a family had said something in the morning previous to the attack, that a man who would do such a thing ought to be put in the Penitentiary. Scoby immediately after the outrage was perpetrated, escaped from the field in which fifteen or twenty hands were working and has not been heard from since. It was supposed that he had gone to Nashville to join the army, Scoby is said to have escaped from Wilson County, after having shot a man. Little or no interest was manifested in the case by the Civil authorities, and I believe no pursuit or attempt to arrest him was made by them.

The town constable reported the case to me, and afterward Mr Randolph, the employer of the two