y are only
the instruments of the state, that is to say of the citizens. I
myself, by taxation, have contributed to the expenses of the scaffold
whereon I shall be executed.

The priest pleads with me that I may not die in my sin. He does not
understand, and I may not tell him, that Margaret died in hers, and
that I must do likewise if I would spend eternity with her.

He carries the whole dogma of the Church in his face and shoulders,
this old priest, but he is a good man and sincere. His endeavour is to
help and comfort me, but his words are short-armed to relieve my agony.
Surely my soul has descended into hell.

To-day, he spoke of my mother, but I would not have it. One need not
die a hundred deaths....

"Oh! little did my mother think
The day she cradled me
O' the lands I was to travel in,
Or the death I was to dee."

* * * * *

My dread is not from fear of the physical pain of hanging, for, after
all, the life of every man and every woman ends in a strangle. It is
that these men will lay their hands on me and bind me with a rope and
that I may not forbid them. The indignity of it is unbearable. The
prison stripes, the handcuffs, the black cap--these are from the
devil's wardrobe.

It fills me with mute stupefaction, the mental picture I draw of myself
when I am swung out on a rope, a grisly limp nothing of humanity; I who
this minute am young and full of sap and sinew. I cannot endure that
men should look upon my countenance twisted into an inhuman grimace; on
my horribly bulging eyes, and on my tongue hanging out like the purple
petal of the wild flag. It is not decent so to mutilate a man.

And when they have thus distorted my face, then will they blot out its
hideousness with quick-lime like one would rub an ugly picture off a
slate.

This malign system of burying murderers in lime, and refusing the body
to friends, doubtless has its origin in the Roman custom whereby the
remains of the Christians were burned to ashes and cast into the river
so that not a vestige would remain. The Romans thought in this way
they would deprive their victims of all hope of the resurrection.

The guard keeps a light burning at night that he may watch me the
better. It is his duty to deliver me alive to the executioner. If I
were so minded, I could sever the radial arteries in my wrists with my
teeth and he would not know. This is why I laugh out loud and will not
tell