s excellency Morgan Lewis, Governor of the State of New
York, containing directions for a respite of the execution until further
orders, and announcing that a reprieve, in due form, would soon be
forwarded.

It was now long after noon, and the sheriff, having received this letter
at nine o'clock in the morning, had kept it in his pocket during the
entire proceedings, "conceiving it improper to divulge the respite until
the crisis." The sheriff had acted with the advice of a few others who
were let into the secret. Even the attending ministers of religion were
uninformed of the respite until it was dramatically produced upon the
stage. The thing, in fact, outdid all stagecraft, for while it is quite
consistent with the traditions of theatrical art that an execution
should be stayed at the critical moment by the appearance of a furiously
galloping horseman waving a reprieve above his head, probably never
elsewhere in the history of the drama or in the annals of the law has
the official document been produced at the gallows, after the adjustment
of the fatal noose, from the pocket of the hangman!

In the judgment of the sheriff it appeared that since the order for a
respite had arrived too late to forestall the gathering of great
multitudes to witness the hanging, it was equally clear that it had come
too early to be made public at once without causing unnecessary
disappointment to thousands who were still enjoying the ecstasies of
anticipation. So he carried out the original programme to the letter,
going through with all the preliminaries and forms of the execution,
stopping short only of the actual hanging.

When the sheriff made his amazing announcement from the scaffold, the
prisoner swooned, and the whole scene was changed. The prisoner was
reconducted to the jail with the same pomp and bravery of troops and
music that had brought him to the scaffold. The spectators slowly
dispersed, and before sunset the village assumed its accustomed
tranquility.

The next issue of _The Otsego Herald_ asserted that "the proceedings of
the day were opened, progressed, and closed in a manner which reflected
honor on the judiciary, the executive, the clergy, the military, and the
citizens of the county."

Arnold was never hanged. The State legislature commuted his sentence to
imprisonment for life.

Another story of the gallows belongs to a later period. On Friday,
August 24, 1827, the hanging of a man named Strang was witnesse