pleased with our discomfiture and
our despising of him. "Next day some chap came to see me, pretending he
was my brother. And I carried out my part of it by cursing him at first
and then begging him to give me decent burial. So he went away, and, I
suppose, received permission to get me right after I was cut down.

"There was a fence built around the scaffold they had ready for me and
the party I was about to fling, and they had some militia there, too.
The crowd seemed quiet enough till they led me out. Then their buzzing
sounded like a hive of bees getting all stirred up. Then a few loud
voices, then shouts. Some rocks came flying at me after that, and it
looked to me as though the hanging would not be so gentle a party after
all. I tell you I was afraid. I wished it was over.

* * * * *

"The mob pushed against the fence and flattened it out, coming over it
like waves over a beach. The soldiers fired into the air, but still they
came, and I, I ran--up, onto the scaffold. It was safer!" As he said
this he chuckled loudly. "I'll bet," he laughed, "that's the first time
a guy ever ran into the noose for the safety of it! The mob came only to
the foot of the scaffold though, from where they seemed satisfied to see
the law take its course. The sheriff was nervous. So cut up that he only
made a fling at tying my ankles, just dropped a rope around my wrists.
He was like me, he wanted to get it over, and the crowd on its way. Then
he put the rope around my neck, stepped back and shot the trap. Zamm! No
time for a prayer--or for me to laugh at the offer!--or a last word or
anything.

"I felt the floor give, felt myself shoot through. Smack! My weight on
the end of the rope hit me behind the ears like a mallet. Everything
went black. Of course it would have been just my luck to get a broken
neck out of it and give the scientist no chance to revive me. But after
a second or two, or a minute, or it could have been an hour, the
blackness went away enough to allow me to know I was hanging on the end
of the rope, kicking, fighting, choking to death. My tongue swelled, my
face and head and heart and body seemed ready to burst. Slowly I went
into a deep mist that I knew then was _the_ mist, then--then--I was off
floating in the air over the heads of the crowd, watching my own
hanging!

"I saw them give that slowly swinging carcass on the end of its rope
time enough to thoroughly die, then, from my