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 party to capture a building called the rifle-works about half a mile from the armory proper, and another to occupy the arsenal. By this time the whole village was practically in Brown's hands, and not a shot had been fired. A considerable number of citizens had been picked up, but there was no general alarm. About midnight an Irish watchman came down to relieve the other watchman on the railroad bridge over the Shenandoah, and found Oliver Brown and William Thompson in charge. He resisted arrest, and Thompson fired at him, the bullet grazing his scalp. This shot alarmed many of the people in the town, who awoke to find the place firmly in the possession of a band of men of whose purposes and motives they knew absolutely nothing.

Stephens and Anderson brought in Colonel Lewis Washington and his negroes and some neighboring slaveowners. Brown, who had set up his