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Show KANSAS REVISITED. 435 was the Bender farm. If the spirit of murder was there, it was cer-tainly the loveliest form in which that dread spirit ever stood re-vealed. No black and blasted heath, no dark wood or lonely gorge, such as romance makes the mute accessories of horrid crime ; but the billowy prairie, rising swell on swell, as if the undulating ocean, changed to firm set earth, stood fixed and motionless forever. The house had stood in the center of this vale, two miles from the nearest neighbor, and commanding a view of all approaches for that distance. But a few weeks had passed since the murders were discovered, and yet scarcely a vestige of house or stable was left. Visitors had carried them away by splinters! Even the young trees in the orchard had been dug up and removed. The excavation beneath the house, in which the murderers had al-lowed their victims to bleed before burial, still bore the horrid signs. The scant rains of summer had not washed away the blood from its margin ; it was half full of purple water. In the garden the graves remained just as left when the bodies were removed. Eight bodies were found there, including that of a girl eight years old, who was murdered and buried with her father. They had been buried in all sorts of positions. One man, in a round hole, lay with his head di-rectly between his feet. A Mr. Longcor, one of the victims, lay with his little daughter between his limbs. Besides these eight, three other missing men were traced to the neighborhood, bringing the whole number of victims up to eleven. Other murders have excited the community, but none with such circumstances of barbarity as these. It appeared, from an examination of the house ( the Benders kept a sort of hotel), that the victim, when seated at the table, had his back against a loose curtain which separated the room in two apartments. Behind this curtain stood the murderer, and, at a con-venient moment, dealt the unsuspecting guest a deadly blow in the back of the head with a huge hammer. He fell back, the trap- door was raised, his throat was cut, and he was tumbled into the pit to lie till the last drop of gore had ebbed away. Thence he, was taken at night and buried in the garden. And these fiends incarnate, after this fearful violation of the rites of hospitality and the laws of God and man, went on with their daily life '- ate and drank and slept, and perhaps rejoiced and made merry, with that dreadful pool, fast filling with the blood of their victims, just beneath their feet. The nearest neighbor was a German, named Brockman, who was roughly treated and narrowly escaped hanging by the mob when the murders were first discovered. His account of the family is curious |