I have just learned, since I wrote the last sentence, that the society of regulators includes, not only the county of Ogle, but those of De Kalb and Winnebago, where the depredations of the horse-thieves and the perfect impunity with which they manage to exercise their calling, have exhausted the patience of the inhabitants.  In those counties, as well as in Ogle, their patrons live at some of the finest groves, where they own large farms.  Ten or twenty stolen horses will be brought to one of these places of a night, and before sunrise the desperadoes employed to take them are again mounted and on their way to some other station.  In breaking up these haunts, the regulators, I understand, have proceeded with some of the formalities commonly used in administering justice.  The accused party has been allowed to make his defense, and witnesses have been examined, both for and against him.

These proceedings, however, have lately suffered a most tragical interruption.  Not long after Bridge’s house was pulled down, two men, mounted and carrying rifles, called at the dwelling of a Mr Campbell, living at Whiterock Grove, in Ogle county, who belonged to the company of regulators, and who had acted as the messenger to convey to Bridge the order to leave the county.  Meeting Mrs. Campbell without the house, they told her that they wished to speak to her husband.  Campbell made his appearance at the door and immediately both the men fired.  He fell mortally wounded and lived but a few minutes.  “You have killed my husband,” said Mrs. Campbell to one of the murderers whose name was Driscoll.  Upon this they rode off at full speed.

As soon as the event was known the whole country was roused, and every man who was not an associate of the horse-thieves, shouldered his rifle to go in pursuit of the murderers.  They apprehended the father of Driscoll, a man nearly seventy years of age, and one of his sons, William Driscoll, the former a reputed horse-thief, and the latter, a man who had hitherto borne a tolerably fair character, and subjected them to a separate examination.  The father was wary in his answers, and put on the appearance of perfect innocence, but William Driscoll was greatly agitated, and confessed that he, with his father and others, had planned the murder of Campbell, and that David Driscoll, his brother, together with another associate, was employed to execute it.  The father and son were then sentenced to death; they were bound and made to kneel; about fifty men took aim at each, and, in three hours from the time they were taken, they were dead men.  A pit was dug on the spot where they fell, in the midst of a prairie near their dwelling; their corpses, pierced with bullet-holes in every part, were thrown in, and the earth was heaped over them.