et society provoked
into the commission of further outrages. Everybody wanted the tragedy
hushed up, ignored, forgotten, if possible.

And so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one when Will
Joyce, the blacksmith's journeyman, came out and proclaimed himself the
assassin! Plainly he was not minded to be robbed of his glory. He made
his proclamation, and stuck to it. Stuck to it, and insisted upon
a trial. Here was an ominous thing; here was a new and peculiarly
formidable terror, for a motive was revealed here which society could
not hope to deal with successfully--VANITY, thirst for notoriety. If
men were going to kill for notoriety's sake, and to win the glory of
newspaper renown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possible
invention of man could discourage or deter them? The town was in a sort
of panic; it did not know what to do.

However, the grand jury had to take hold of the matter--it had no
choice. It brought in a true bill, and presently the case went to the
county court. The trial was a fine sensation. The prisoner was the
principal witness for the prosecution. He gave a full account of the
assassination; he furnished even the minutest particulars: how he
deposited his keg of powder and laid his train--from the house to
such-and-such a spot; how George Ronalds and Henry Hart came along just
then, smoking, and he borrowed Hart's cigar and fired the train with it,
shouting, "Down with all slave-tyrants!" and how Hart and Ronalds made
no effort to capture him, but ran away, and had never come forward to
testify yet.

But they had to testify now, and they did--and pitiful it was to see
how reluctant they were, and how scared. The crowded house listened to
Joyce's fearful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in a
deep hush which was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding,
with a roaring repetition of his "Death to all slave-tyrants!"--which
came so unexpectedly and so startlingly that it made everyone present
catch his breath and gasp.

The trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait,
with other slanderous and insane pictures, and the edition sold beyond
imagination.

The execution of Joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. It drew a vast
crowd. Good places in trees and seats on rail fences sold for half a
dollar apiece; lemonade and gingerbread-stands had great prosperity.
Joyce recited a furious and fantastic and denunciatory speech on the
scaffol