citizens joined the ranks of the guard when the arrest was made.
All lamented the stern necessity which dictated the execution.

Everything being ready, the command was given, "Men, do your duty,"
and the box being instantly slipped from beneath his feet, he died
almost instantaneously.

The body was cut down and carried to the Virginia Hotel, where, in a
darkened room, it was scarcely laid out, when the unfortunate and
bereaved companion of the deceased arrived, at headlong speed, to
find that all was over, and that she was a widow. Her grief and
heart-piercing cries were terrible evidences of the depth of her
attachment for her lost husband, and a considerable period elapsed
before she could regain the command of her excited feelings.

There is something about the desperado-nature that is wholly
unaccountable--at least it looks unaccountable. It is this. The true
desperado is gifted with splendid courage, and yet he will take the most
infamous advantage of his enemy; armed and free, he will stand up before
a host and fight until he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is under
the gallows and helpless he will cry and plead like a child. Words are
cheap, and it is easy to call Slade a coward (all executed men who do not
"die game" are promptly called cowards by unreflecting people), and when
we read of Slade that he "had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and
lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the fatal
beam," the disgraceful word suggests itself in a moment--yet in
frequently defying and inviting the vengeance of banded Rocky Mountain
cut-throats by shooting down their comrades and leaders, and never
offering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of peerless
bravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward, many a
chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dying
speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity with
what looked liked the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified in
believing, from the low intellect of such a creature, that it was not
moral courage that enabled him to do it. Then, if moral courage is not
the requisite quality, what could it have been that this stout-hearted
Slade lacked?--this bloody, desperate, kindly-mannered, urbane gentleman,
who never hesitated to warn his most ruffianly enemies that he would kill
them whenever or