People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1894 — THE GREAT LARAN REBELLION. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE GREAT LARAN REBELLION.

BY NYM CRINKLE.

[Copt right, 1834.] CHAPTER llL—Continued. “Now listen to me, Jean Laport,” •aid Kent, dropping 1 his voice, “I’ve Just twenty minutes to say all I’ve got to tell you. I have come here to liberate you. All this business of newspaCer and politics is a blind to get in ere. I can stay here three days more. In that time I can free you. You must follow my directions minutely. In three interviews I can get the tools to you. I have made all the arrangements to take care of you when you are outside the walls. Is there any ehance of their changing your cell?" Laport looked at Kent suspiciously. “What do you want to free me for?” h« asked. “I know your whole history,” replied Kent, “and I sympathize with you. But sympathy has nothing to do with my actions. I want your help. You are the best mechanician in the country. I have work for you—let that suffice. If they do not change your cell within five days you are a free man. Now, listen. The first thing to do is to get a stone out in the darkest corner of the cell 60 as to hide the tools I bring you Ilere is the thin steel knife to do it, and here is the muriatic acid and syringe to soften the mortar.” Kent took from an inner breast pocket as he spoke a tool which ho screwed together, a small phial and a little syringe. “You aro to gather the mortar in this handkerchief and I will take it away when I next sco you. The wall on that side is part of the old wall of the original penitentiary. It was built by contract and is only faced up with blocks; the center is filled in with cracked stone. You can loosen one of those blocks before to-morrow and I will bring you the implements to cut that bar and the wire to make the descent. I have made the measurement of all the spaces outside, watched the system of guard relief—and will furnish you a plan for every foot of your way.”

Laport wa3 turning' the tool over and inspecting it with a workman’s admiration. Kent continued: “You are to escape by the window. It is twelve feet above the laundry shed. The window bar is iron, not even caso hardened. You are to work at it on Triday when the engine in the laundry is running. From the corner of the laundry to the angle of the prison wall east is fifty feet. The guard cannot see you till you get to the wall, and if you get there at the right time ne will be on the eastern stretch and you will be in the shadow of the main building. There will be a wire over the wall in the far angle. Once you are over I will take care of you. I’ll give you further directions to-morrow. You must clearly understand that to carry out this scheme you must remain <n this cell and, to insure your staying here, you must assist me in deceiving the governor. I shall tell him that you complained of the confinement and shall advise him to keep you .'ere till I get all the information I want.” Kent stopped and listened. He saw that the prospect of freedom had awakened a flash of interest in the old man’s eye. “What do you want me to do,” asked Laport, “that you take all this trouble?” “I want to employ your genius,” -said Kent, “and pay you handsomely. If you don’t like the employment, you are at liberty to go and do as you please. But you will not object to it. There is no time to discuss that now. I will tell the governor that I am getting the information I want from you. I have already invented a plausible story. He will let me come back here to-morrow. Ho your work to-night 60 that when I bring you the tools you will have a place to put them. Everything depends on your loosening one of those stones to-night in case they examine your cell. Follow my directions and I will give you your liberty. Stand still a moment and let me measure you.” He took a little piece of paper and a tiny tape line from his pocket. “You .understand,” he said, “that it is to get a disguise ready that will fit you. Tomorrow I will bring you two blank checks to sign. You will understand later what they are for.” A moment later a step was heard in the corridor, and Kent was sure the governor was listening. He was not mistaken. What the governor heard In part was this: “Now then why not tell me the rest of it? These men can do you no service row, and tne friends of the administration will secure your pardon if they are furnished with all the facta, have »-fid enough to make It

worth my while to stay here Another day to get the rest of it and I’m anx< Lous to get back.” The governor shot the bolt and opening the door looked in. “Time.” he said. Kent appeared to be so engrossed in his interview that he did not instantly perceive the entrance of the officer, but went on talking to Laport. “Think it over,” he said. “Your own personal comfort if not your freedom may be involved in it” Then he and the governor left the cell. The first thing that Kent did was to tell the governor that ho had su«ceede)d in unsealing Laport’s lips and had already got from him some intimations of the political gang which had attempted to use him. He then narrated a story of his own invention which was so ingeniously fabricated that the governor was deeply interested and himself proposed that Kent should stay until he had got the whole of it and this Kent at last consented to do, merely remarking: “I’d keep the fellow in that cell till 1 get it, if I were you. The confinement galls him and I have no doubt he will sooner or later give away the whole matter in order to get back to the workshop. Keep him locked up twenty-four hours longer.” The next day there was another interview. The moment Kent was alone with the prisoner, he asked: “Did you get the stone out?” Laport took from his breast where it had been concealed under his woolen shirt, a small folded packet. Kent took it, fingered it a moment, and put it in his hip pocket. The two men then went to the dark corner of the cell and Laport, getting down on his knees, showed him that he had loosened one of the small flagstones in the flooring. Kent looked closely at the work, saw that no one could perceive the difference In the seams unless he brought a light to it and merely said: “Good.” Then the two men sat down on the edge of the iron bed. Kent had brought with him a circular steel cutting saw which fitted into the case of his gold watch. The brace and other appliances he took from different parts of his person, and Laport, with the instant divination of a mechanician, fitted them together. They

were slender and apparently fragile, but had been made by a surgical instrument manufacturer, and were of the finest material. Laport examined them with unconcealed admiration. Kent, however, did not allow him to waste the fraction of a minute. “Put it away at once,” he said. Laport touched the flat stone with his foot on one corner; it tipped at the pressure; he inserted his finger and, lifting it up, placed the implements In the space beneath. He also received from Kent a little coil of steel wire. “It is to let you down from the window to the laundry roof,” he said. “Every inch of it has been tested up to five hundred pounds. But all this mechanical assistance is of no sort of avail if you fail to follow out my schedule of time and scrupulously fit every move to my arranged programme. You will cut the bar to-morrow while the engine in the laundry is running. How long do you calculate it will take you?” “If it is an iron bar, I can do it in two hours with that saw.”

“Very good. You are to leave a segment of iron to hold it in its place and rub the rust into the fresh cut. You are to get out the window on Saturday morning at exactly half-past two to the minute. I will bring you to-mor-row a tiny duplicate watch set to one I have myself, and a little box of wax matches. I will also bring you a pair of kid gloves padded, so that you can use the loops in the wire without cutting your hands. You must be at the far angle in the wall exactly ten minutes later and you will find the other wire thrown over for you. It will not do to have it there before and you are to pull it after you when you are on the other side. One other thing: You must manage in some way to set the bar back in its place. No one will look into your cell till five o’clock from the wicket in the door, but the absence of the bar might be detected by the patrol on the walL He carries a bull’s-eye. Can you do that?” “Yes,” said Laport, “if I have any foothold on the wire and you can bring me half an ounce of gum shellac softened in alcohoL” “Very good. Yon will have eight minutes to get over the wall and you will land in a high clump of jimson weeds. I want you to remember the rest of my directions. It is necessary that you commit them to memory. At the timß you land in the weeds, there will be a man on a horse in the road and he will start east at break-neck speed. You are to give no heed to him, but cross the road, drop over the bank —it is 6hale and cinders and will leave no footprints—and turn to the left and follow it wi**»t for one hundred feet X'here you will come to a culvert and brook crossing. You are to take to the middle of this stream and follow the bed five hundred feet, rolling your trousers up so as to keep them dry, until you come to an outhouse painted red, which overhangs it. Light a watch and if there ace two gratae* in

chalk on the lowe«* clapboard, yon will know that is the place to tarn. Then follow the path from the onthouse up to the dwelling, but be careful to walk on the gravel and not in the grass. There is a back kitchen with a side door and a common latch. It will be open. There will be a hot fire burning in the large kitchen stove. You are to lock the door and divest yourself of every bit of clothing and bum it there before doing anything else and 6ee that all the shreds are destroyed. When that is done, go to the second story, front room, where you will find the disguise yon are to wear. In the breast pocket of the blouse are three photographs of the man who baa been wearing it. You are to be careful about the wig and mustache. You ought to be in the upper room not later than four. The alarm will be given about five-thirty. That will give you an hour and a half to complete the disguise and the sun will be up. At that moment you will take a paint pot and brush which are in the room and get upon the ladder in front of the house and proceed to paint the siding at the place where the job is left unfinished. You are to speak very little English. You will be fifteen feet above the street. You are to answer all questions in a guttural and unintelligible manner. The main entrance of the prison is nearly opposite that house. The men in the prison office are already familiar with your figure on the ladder and regard you as a stupid Alsatian who has hired the place and is fitting it up as a saloon. At five-thirty I expect a wire will be sent from the nearest hamlet (fifteen miles east) that an escaped prisoner has passed through on a horse. You will be able from your perch if you are quick-witted, to discern by the movements at the prison entrance if the chase is taken up in that direction. If it is, you will have twenty-four hours start, for they will not catch my man Inside of that time, and when they do, they will bo unable to identify him. In the blouse will be a small pocket compass and a little map. At exactly twelve-fifteen, when all the farm hands aro at dinner, you will take a basket on your arm and set out leisurely across the stubble-field, south of the house. You are to follow the path across the field in a southwesterly direction. When you reach the stile at the stone wall, two paths are seen on the other side; take the path that goes down to the wood. The moment you are in the densest part of the grove, you are to malic the most speed you can, following the path by the broolcside until you come to an old and ruined mill a mile west. You will sit down on tho old mill stone in the grass and wait till you hear somo one singing “Home Sweet Home.” It is the signal that all is safe and it will be a woman’s voice. You aro instantly to enter tho old mill and follow exactly tho directions of the lady you will meet there, bearing in mind only this, that a woman has not a man’s sense of time, and you will be missed and inquired for some time during the afternoon and everything will then depend on your speed of movement after you leave tho mill. The arrangements from that point are perfect. Delay alone may make them miscarry. Can you repeat all these points to me?”

CHAPTER IV. Laport marveled at the particularity with which the escape had been planned and at the address of Kent in hoodwinking the governor while conspiring to free his prisoner. Without reasoning upon the matter deeply he set about following out the programme laid down for him and his methodical training enabled him to do it carefully. Laport was over fiftyfive but he was mad© of tough vital material and the prospect of liberty stirred all his old sagacity. Kent saw him for the last time in prison on Friday morning; gave him his additional instructions and tools and left ostensibly for New York at noon, much to the regret of the Ixtels, Kent’s provision had been unerring with regard to Laport, but he made one or two miscalculations about his own movements, and as the governor’s special efforts were directed to his capture, stimulated no doubt by the chagrin on having been so successfully duped (he having learned that his guest was unauthorized and unknown in the New York newspaper office), one of the best detectives in the country got upon his track and followed him to Louisville, Ivy., when the trail was a week old. From this point he traced him into western Tennessee and there the pursuit ended. Kent had disappeared from the surface of the earth. What is remarkable about this part of the hunt is that nothing occurred publicly to awaken the suspicion that Bench and Kent were the same person. Laport’s escape from the prison was effected with but slight variations as it had been planned for him, and there was nothing in his methodical execution of the plan but a grim and uneventful determination accompanied by a silent apprehension, until he arrived as arranged at the old mill, and there the whole character of the proceedings changed as if by magic and began to wear the aspect of a sixteenth century roman ee. While yet some fifty feet away from the mill and hidden in the brush, he listened and distinctly heard female | voices of merriment coming from the | other side. His heart sank. Some picI nicking party had taken possession of ; the secluded retreat and cut off his I last chance. There had been no provision for thi3 contingency in Kent’s I plan. While Laport stood listening | to the bursts of laughter and subdued | screams that mingled with the voices of men in some kind of sport, he distinctly heard some one singing the strains of “Home, Sweet Home,” in a clear soprano. It might be one of those fatal coincidences, for the air was one that anybody would be apt to warble. He considered a moment and determined to take the risk. Working his way through the thickets he came out on the overgrown haul* where the mill stood and went delih eralabr round to the aide kw vkM

the voices proceeded. Hs hid scarcely turned the corner of the mill before he found himself in full view of a party of ladies and gentlemen who had evidently rendezvoused here for a lunch. Their horses were tied to the neighboring trees; a white eloth was spread upon the grass; a colored servant was opening wine. They were elegantly dressed and were unmistakably people of means and leisure taking an outing. At the same moment Laport saw protruding from the grass almost at his feet the circular form of an old millstone and, with a feeling of helplessness, he sat down upon it. A minute had not passed when he was aware that some one was approaching him. It was a woman. She had left the group immediately and

was standing very near him. He looked at her with the greatest amount of interest and suspense. She was handsomely and jauntily dressed in a riding habit and appeared to be at least thirty years of age. Her whole bearing was easy, but dignified. Her handsome oval face was expressive of determination, softened by sensibility. She carried a riding whip. “You are late, professor,” Bhe said, looking at her watch, “and have kept us waiting. Did you meet anyone after you left the stile?” “Yes, I did,” answered Laport. “I met a woman in the wood road going to town with a basket, and she regarded mo suspiciously.” fro un CONTINUED.]

"I HAVE COME HERE TO LIBERATE YOU!”

DR. SAMUEL FRANKLIN, OF CINCINNATE.