But to the Committee again.  This Committee declared themselves to us to be a self-constituted body.  But whether self-constituted or otherwise, it matters not, since they were to all intents and purposes members of the mob—­if not in deed, still in spirit and in heart.  They meant no more than to save the honor of their village by preventing, if possible, bloodshed and death.  They were not men of better principles than the rabble—­they were only men of better breeding.  I do them no injustice.  The tenor of their discourse to us at the house of Mr. Porter, the spirit of an article published by one of their number a few days after in the “Oswego Daily Times,” and the statements of the mob-leader, clearly satisfy me that had we been married, they (the Committee) deeming that our marriage would have been a greater disgrace to their village than even bloodshed or death, would have left us to our fate—­Miss King to be carried off, or perchance grossly insulted, and myself left, as the spiked barrel especially evinced, to torture and to death.  That this Committee saved my life, I have no doubt; and I have publicly thanked them for the act.  So I would be grateful even to the man who took deadly aim at me with his revolver, and only missed his mark.

Previous to the death which I was to suffer in the spiked barrel, I was to undergo various torturings and mutilations of person, aside from the tarring and feathering—­some of these mutilations too shocking to be named in the pages of this book.

Mr. Porter, as I have already said, was also to be mobbed; but, as we afterwards ascertained, only to be coated with tar and feathers and ridden on a rail.

The leader of the mob subsequently averred that so decided was the feeling in Fulton, that in addition to the hundreds who, in person, made the onslaught, there were hundreds more in waiting in the village, who, it was understood between the two companies, were ready to join the onslaughting party at but a moment’s warning.  Indeed, Mrs. Allen now assures me that on her way home that evening, conducted by a portion of the Committee, she twice met crowds of men still coming on to join the multitudes already congregated at Mr. Porter’s.  One of the Committee, fearing that if all Fulton should get together, excited as the people were, there would be bloodshed in spite of all that could be said or done, entreated one of these crowds to go back.  But, heeding him not; on the villains went, some of them uttering oaths and imprecations, some of them hurrahing, and many of them proceeding with great solemnity of step—­these last doubtless being church-members; for the mob was not only on Sabbath evening, but it is a notorious fact which came out early afterwards, that the churches on that evening were, every one of them, quite deserted.