In the Clerk's Office of the District Court, for the Southern District of
Ohio.




THE VILLAIN AND HIS VICTIMS.




CHAPTER I.

FLEMING'S HOTEL.


In the year 1785, as, also, prior and subsequent to that time, there was a
hotel situated in one of the less frequented streets of Pittsburg, then the
largest town west of the mountains, and kept by one Fleming, whence it
derived the name of "Fleming's Hotel." This house, a small one, and
indifferently furnished, was a favorite resort of the Indians who visited
the town on trading expeditions. Fleming had two daughters, who possessed
considerable personal attractions, and that pride of a vain
woman--_beauty_. History does not, to the best of our knowledge, give us
the first names of the two girls; and we will distinguish them as Eliza and
Sarah. Unfortunately for these young females, they had ever been surrounded
by unfavorable circumstances, and exposed to the vices of bad associations;
and that nice discrimination between propriety and politeness, which is a
natural characteristic of the modest woman, had become somewhat
obliterated, and the hold which virtue ever has by nature in the heart of