a vindication of the majesty of the law. When the day set for
the execution of Kelley was come, there was many a home in which the
father of the family announced at breakfast that the children must be
duly washed and dressed in Sabbath array, to accompany him, as in duty
bound, to the solemn spectacle. Nor were all attracted to the dreadful
scene by a sense of duty only, perhaps, at a period when public shows
were few.

The gibbet was erected, amid the December snow, at a point about four
hundred feet south of the site occupied by the present High School, very
near, if not in the midst of, what is now Chestnut Street. Christmas Day
was followed by a thaw, and on Friday, the day set for the execution, a
torrent of rain fell during the morning hours. Yet before noon the
village was thronged with a multitude of men, women and children, keenly
anticipating the gruesome tragedy, until more than four thousand people
were gathered about the gallows.

The court-house and jail stood then not far from their present site. The
procession from the jail to the place of execution was conducted with
much military pomp. Two marshals, each mounted on a prancing steed, led
a troop of cavalry, a corps of artillery, and four companies of
infantry. This formidable array of forces, drawn up in a hollow square
at the jail, having enclosed within its ranks the condemned man and the
attending ministers of the Gospel, moved solemnly to the place of
execution. The prisoner, apparently in a feeble state of health, lay
upon a bed in a sleigh drawn by his favorite black horses, the same that
he had driven to Albany to witness the execution of Strang. The
ministers of religion, the Rev. Mr. Potter and the Rev. John Smith,
pastor of the Presbyterian church, rode in state in the two sleighs that
followed.

Near the gallows there had been erected for the accommodation of
spectators a staging one hundred feet in length and twelve feet in
depth, the front being elevated six feet and the rear eight feet from
the ground. From this structure about six hundred people commanded an
excellent view of the gibbet, while some three thousand others, lacking
this advantage, jostled each other, craning their necks, and standing on
tiptoe, to see what was going forward.

The procession from the jail had arrived upon the grounds, and the
solemnities were about to commence, when the staging suddenly gave way
and fell with a tremendous crash. The spectators upon it wer