Fear, more potent than conscience, forced even the worst of men to observe the requirements of society, and a feeling of comparative security among all classes was the result." Naturally it was not the case that all the bad men were thus exterminated.

From time to time there appeared vividly in the midst of these surroundings additional figures of solitary desperadoes, each to have his list of victims, and each himself to fall before the weapons of his enemies or to meet the justice of the law or the sterner meed of the Vigilantes.

It would not be wholly pleasant to read even the names of a long list of these; perhaps it will be sufficient to select one, the notorious Joseph Slade, one of the "picturesque" characters of whom a great deal of inaccurate and puerile history has been written.

The truth about Slade is that he was a good man at first, faithful in the discharge of his duties as an agent of the stage company.

Needing at times to use violence lawfully, he then began to use it unlawfully.