Brown took not his one chance of escape to the
mountains--why, it is difficult to say. In prison afterwards he
said his weakness in yielding to the entreaties of his prisoners
ruined him. 'It was the first time I ever lost command of
myself, and now I am punished for it,' he added. At another time
when questioned he gave fatalistic answers, and said it was
'ordained so ages before the world was made.' By afternoon he
was on the defensive within the armoury, and a fierce fight
ensued. Even then his simple notions of justice were uppermost,
and to the last as his men fired from the portholes he would be
heard saying of some one passing in the street, 'That man is
unarmed don't shoot.' Two of his sons--Watson and Oliver Brown--
were pierced with bullets. As he straightened out the limbs of
the second, he said, 'This is the third son I have lost in the
cause.' Always the cause! The night fell and the fight was in
abeyance, but in the morning he was summoned to surrender, and
refused, saying he would die there. At length the engine-house,
their last resort, held stubbornly, was captured, and Brown fell,
wounded by the sword of a young lieutenant who had marked him for
his stroke. One of his prisoners who was by says truly of his
last fight, 'Almost any other man who saw his sons fall would
have exacted life for life, but he spared all of us who were in
his power.
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