A SINGULAR RETRIBUTION.

Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 470, 13 July 1871, Page 2

A SINGULAR RETRIBUTION.

Recently the people residing upon tlio head waters of the Blue, and a short distance from Santa Fc, were thrown into a high state of excitement by the sudden death of a young man from Franklin county, Kansas,, named Canovor Ainsworth, who was found by a negro servant of a farmer on the Blue, seated bolt upright against a tree, dead and cold. At first the negro thought he had been frozen whilst asleep, bo calm appeared tho corpse. The alarm was given and the stiff and npparontly frozen corpse was carried to a fai*nhouse close by. In the coat pocket of young Ainsworth "was a four-ounce bottle labelled " Tincture Opii." Letters -were found upon his person addressed to Mrs. D. S. Ainswortb, Franklin, Douglas County, Kan., and another addressed to a young lady, ■whoso name we withhold, and who has been the object of Ainsworth's affections for the past two years, but who had resisted all his importunities to become his wife. As neither letter was opened at the time, their contents will only be known to those to whom they were, addressed, the mother and the fiancee. To H. Q-. Berry, of Johnson County, we are indebted for tho following outline of the causes that led to this rash act of self-destruction:—Ainsworth vras a member of a gang of freebooters during the war, and though young, not more than eighteen years old, was one of the most daring of Jennison's scouts, and by his temerity and daring many nests of guerillas were discomfited, and their rendezvous destroyed. It so happenod that Ainsworth, while carrying despatches from Colonel Anthony to Jennison, then at Kansas city, in the winter of 1861, stopped at the house of a rebel farmer, and discovered it to be the head-quarters of a pavty of Dick Yeager's guerillas. He managed to esoapo into the -woods, leaving the horse to escape down the road. The following day Ainsworth guided a party of the Third Wisconsin cavalry to the guerillas' base of supplies, and when they left it was a heap of smouldering ruinß. Nothing was saved by the family except a bed and some bedding given to tho woman and a little girl, whose indignation and tears so amused young Ainsworth that he made sport of her distress and frustrated her attempt to save some trifling trinkets from the flames. The next time they met was two years ago at the Olatho fair, -when Ainsworth was so smitten by tho beauty of tho handsome rustic maiden that he sought and made her acquaintance. He failed to recognise in her the little ragged rebel girl of seven years before 5 but the child's memory -was better than the boy's or man's. She knew him again, and before the day was over reminded him of that eventful winter's night. Ainsworth treated it as a jest, and the girl caved not to make her foelings known. The acquaintance was renewed, Ainsworth sought vainly for the affections of' the handsome Missourian, until despairing of receiving mercy from one ho had onco abused and insulted, lie in a fit of despair ended his life within sight of tho old ruins, whoso crumbling chimneys and a few blaok locust treea only remain to tell a story of the horrors of war.— American, Fqper, fv\ ,■ . ■ ... ...