In fact, he told me the reason he did not meet you upstairs was to spare you the humiliation of a beating in the sight of others." I submit that that unguarded remark of Philip Lynch convicts him of having been privy in advance to Mr.Winters' intentions whatever they may have been, or at least to his meaning to make an assault upon me, but I leave to others to determine how much censure an editor deserves for inveigling a weak, non-combatant man, also a publisher, to a pen of his own to be horsewhipped, if no worse, for the simple printing of what is verbally in the mouth of nine out of ten men, and women too, upon the street.
While writing this account two theories have occurred to me as possibly true respecting this most remarkable assault: First--The aim may have been simply to extort from me such admissions as in the hands of money and influence would have sent me to the Penitentiary for libel.

This, however, seems unlikely, because any statements elicited by fear or force could not be evidence in law or could be so explained as to have no force.

The statements wanted so badly must have been desired for some other purpose.
Second--The other theory has so dark and wilfully murderous a look that I shrink from writing it, yet as in all probability my death at the earliest practicable moment has already been decreed, I feel I should do all I can before my hour arrives, at least to show others how to break up that aristocratic rule and combination which has robbed all Nevada of true freedom, if not of manhood itself.

Although I do not prefer this hypothesis as a "charge," I feel that as an American citizen I still have a right both to think and to speak my thoughts even in the land of Sharon and Winters, and as much so respecting the theory of a brutal assault (especially when I have been its subject) as respecting any other apparent enormity.

I give the matter simply as a suggestion which may explain to the proper authorities and to the people whom they should represent, a well ascertained but notwithstanding a darkly mysterious fact.