e
extremity of fear, and I had my first lesson in human stupidity. I have
told the story of this execution in another place and have no mind
to repeat it here. But I shall never forget the spidery black-painted
galleries and staircases and the whitewashed walls of the corridor.
I shall never forget the living man who stood trembling and almost
unconscious in the very gulf of cowardice and horror. I shall never
forget the face of the wretched young chaplain who, like myself, found
himself face to face with his first encounter with sudden death, and
who, poor soul, had over-primed himself with stimulant. I shall never
forget, either, that ghoul of a Calcraft, with his disreputable grey
hair, his disreputable undertaker's suit of black, and a million dirty
pin-pricks which marked every pore of the skin of his face. Calcraft
took the business business-like, and pinioned his man in the cell
(with a terror-stricken half-dozen of us looking on) as calmly to all
appearance as if he had been a tailor fitting on a coat.

The chaplain read the Burial Service, or such portion of it as is
reserved for these occasions, in a thick and indistinct voice. A bell
clanged every half-minute or thereabouts, and it seemed to me as if
it had always been ringing and would always ring. I have the dimmest
notion--indeed, to speak the truth, I have no idea at all--as to how the
procession formed and how we found ourselves at the foot of the gallows.
The doomed man gabbled a prayer under his breath at galloping speed, the
words tumbling one over the other. 'Lord Jesus have mercy upon me and
receive my spirit.' The hapless chaplain read the service. Calcraft
bustled ahead. The bell boomed. Hughes came to the foot of the gallows,
and I counted mechanically nineteen black steps, fresh-tarred and
sticky. 'I can't get up,' said the murderer. A genial warder clapped him
on the shoulder, for all the world as if there had been no mischief in
the business. Judging by look and accent, the one man might have invited
the other to mount the stairs of a restaurant. 'You'll get up right
enough,' said the warder. He got up, and they hanged him.

Where everything was strange and dreamlike, the oddest thing of all
was to see Calcraft take the pinioned fin-like hand of the prisoner and
shake it when he had drawn the white cap over the face and arranged
the rope. He came creaking in new boots down the sticky steps of the
gallows, pulled a rope to free a support which