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was above reproach. Murphy was the generalissimo, Riley the spy and scout, Dolan the fighter.

Fate weaves strange patterns. When Murphy was at the high tide of his prosperity in 1875, Alexander A. McSween and his bride, Mrs. Susan Hummer McSween, set out overland for New Mexico from their home in Atchison, Kansas. McSween was a native of Charlotte-town, Prince Edward Island, and had been educated for the Presbyterian ministry. With a pulpit open to him, he decided to take up the legal profession, moved to Kansas, graduated in law at Washington University, then a well-known school in St. Louis, hung out his shingle first at Eureka, Kansas, and later practised in Atchison. Mrs. McSween was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where her colonial ancestors settled in 1731, and traced her ancestry back to the Spanglers of Frederick Barbarossa's court, and of soldierly fame during the Crusades.

The McSweens were married in Atchison. McSween's health not being robust, they decided to migrate to New Mexico, where in perennial sunshine and dry, pure air, McSween expected to regain his strength and establish himself in practice. Their tentative destination was Santa Fé; but they intended to look about them after their arrival and settle in whatever growing town seemed to offer the most promising opportunities for an ambitious young lawyer.

Their westward journey was a honeymoon trip, and as they travelled in leisurely fashion along the Santa Fé trail, this ancient highway of romance and adventure seemed to these young honeymoon gypsies a pathway of dreams leading surely to happiness and fortune. So it might have been but for their chance meeting with Señor Miguel