Marshall County Independent

PREACHER'S HOUSE DYNAMITED.
While Rev. Peter, of Lapaz, Is Out of Town
His Enemies Get in Their Work.

Last Saturday night someone maliciously put dynamite under the house of Rev. Martin Luther Peter, of Lapaz, and demolished the entire front of it. Suspicions have been fixed, but no convicting evidence can be adduced. The trick was prima facie the work of a coward. Mrs. Peter and her little baby were alone in the house, as Mr. Peter was absent from town. All this were the perpetrators doubtless aware of and hence chose that very night for their contemptible job. When the explosion came, Mrs. Peter was frightened almost into insensibility. Although escaping any physical injury she was so prostrated that she could not investigate to determine the cause of the disturbance. When the neighbors rushed to the house, attracted by the loud explosion, they found her in the same exhausted condition from which she was revived only by careful ministering.

The men who planned and carried out this malicious plot are unknown. Their reason for doing it may at least be guessed at. Rev. Peter, it must be remembered, has been carrying on a constant warfare with the saloon element of Lapaz. Recently on more than one occasion he has caused arrests and forced the accused parties into the courts to defend themselves. A natural conclusion would be that the affair Saturday night was a bit of pique practiced by the saloon men upon their followers. Some, however, refuse to believe that such an explanation satisfies the situation. The men placed under the ban of suspicion are men whose characters are above anything so cowardly and low. It follows that some enemy of the saloon men themselves may have done the deed in order to gain a personal triumph and see the innocent unjustly accused by the public eye.