the store for a considerable time past of liquor and provisions in large quantities.  This crime, great enough of itself, was still aggravated by the manner in which it was committed.  Having formed their party, seven in number, and sworn each other to secrecy and fidelity, they procured and altered keys to fit the different locks on the three doors of the provision store; and it was agreed, that whenever any one of the seven should be posted there as sentinel during the night, two or more of the gang, as they found it convenient, were to come during the hours in which they knew their associate would have the store under his charge, when, by means of their keys, and sheltered in the security which he afforded them (by betraying in so flagrant a manner the trust and confidence reposed in him as a sentinel), they should open a passage into the store, where they should remain shut up until they had procured as much liquor or provisions as they could take off.  If the patrols visited the store while they chanced to be within its walls, the door was found locked and secure, the sentinel alert and vigilant on his post, and the store apparently safe.

Fortunately for the settlement, on the night preceding the discovery one of the party intended to have availed himself of his situation as sentinel, and to enter the store alone, purposing to plunder without the participation of his associates.  But while he was standing with the key in the lock, he heard the patrol advancing.  The key had done its office, but as he knew that the lock would be examined by the corporal, in his fright and haste to turn it back again, he mistook the way, and, finding that he could not get the key out of the lock, he broke it, and was compelled to leave the wards in it; the other part of the key he threw away.

On this information, the six soldiers whom he accused were taken up and tried; when, the evidence of the accomplice being confirmed by several strong corroborating circumstances, among which it appeared that the store had been broken into and robbed by them at various times for upwards of eight months, they were unanimously found guilty, and sentenced to suffer that death which they owned they justly merited.  Their defence wholly consisted in accusing the accomplice of having been the first to propose and carry the plan into execution, and afterwards the first to accuse and ruin the people he had influenced to associate with him.  A crime of such magnitude called for a severe example; and the sentence was carried into execution a few days after their trial.

Some of these unhappy men were held in high estimation by their officers, but the others, together with the accomplice Hunt, had been long verging toward this melancholy end.  Four of them had been tried for the death of their comrade Bulmore, which happened in a contest with one of them in November last; and their manner of conducting themselves at various times appeared to have been very reprehensible.  The