ssed to my face their wild and prickly beards. There was
one of them, named Drummond, who swore he would cut my heart out, and
they executed a sort of death-tune on the floor with their balls and
links. I lost all knowledge and perception in my fright, and cannot, at
this interval, remember anything succeeding, but the execution. They
were put to death upon a single long scaffold, the counterpart of that
erected for the Booth conspirators, and the rope attached to the neck of
the least guilty, broke when the drop fell, and cast him upon the
ground, lacerated, but conscious, to be picked up and again suspended,
while he begged for life, like a child.

The sixth miscreant murdered from revenge, which is just a trifle better
than avarice: his girl preferred another, and the disappointed man,
Bowen, went to sea. Returning, he found the united lovers in the
exultation of happiness; a child had just been born to them, and,
touched by their content, Bowen gave the old rival his hand, and asked
him out to accept a bumper. They drank again and again,--the spirits
burning their blood to fire, and reviving again the bitter story of
Bowen's love and shame. Within the hour, the husband lay at the jilted
man's feet! He was condemned to death, and I undertook to describe his
exit for a weekly newspaper.

Still I see him, broad and muscular, climbing the gallows stair with
his peaked cap, deathly white, and looking up at the sun as if he
dreaded its eye. There was the muttering of prayers, the spasm of one
spectator taken sick at the crisis, and the dull thump of the scaffold
falling in.

The preacher Harden, who fondled his wife on his knee, and fed her the
while with poison, passed away so recently, that I need not revive the
scene into which all his bad life should have been prolonged.

The death of Armstrong, expiating a hypocrite's life at Philadelphia, is
not so well remembered: he killed an old man in the heart of the city,
riding in a wagon, and dumped him out when he reached the suburbs. His
life, to the end, was marked by all insolence and infamy, and on the day
of the execution, he made a pretended confession, inculpating two
innocent persons. One hour after this, he made the following speech:--

MY FRIENDS: I have a few words to say to you; I am going to die;
and let me say, in passing, I die in peace with my Maker; and if,
at this moment, a pardon was offered me on condition of giving up
my Maker,