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whispering and consultation among the magistrates, they passed an order that I should notify paid Pucket "in person" to put that road in repair. I though this a mere joke at the time, as I had often been the butt of a joke for being "a Yankee." Four days after this  —Nov. 16. 1866 — I went to the Court House to mail some letters, when to my surprise, the Clerk handed me the order that I thought to be all a joke. I read it — there was no mistaking its meaning — it was imperative and peremptory, and I at once changed my contemplated route home, and went by where Pucket was at work, finishing his corn harvest. Speaking to him pleasantly, I told him the order of the Court and my business. Watching his chance, he sprung upon me at my back, and by a stunning blow upon the back of my head, knocked me down upon my face — jumped upon me, nearly killing me by an injury to the loins and left hip — then seised my throat with his left hand, turning me nearly on my back, and beat me with a stone — breaking all the bones of my face except my lower jaw — gouged out my left eye, and nearly destroyed my right. Upon awaking to consciousness, two and a half hours afterward, I found all the bones confining my nose to my face broken, my upper jaw broken, my left eye gouged out, my throat nearly torn out, and my skull fractured in my left temple, which was the cause of my insensibility at that time and often since.

The County Court, whose special officer had been thus         

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-10-11 18:16:59