Year: 1872

, 10 Ss


emnly and impressively uttered, had strangely
enough awakened train of thought in the
mind of that one individual, who, but few
days previously, beheld the guilty wretch and
the terrified negro industriously heaping up
pine knots over the spot, with faces so wo-be-
gone and full of conscious guilt, that they
might even then have suggested to more
shrewd and suspicious. observer, the terrible
crime they were so busy in attempting to con-
ceal.


While some of the party we're throwing out
the earth, others were listening to narrative
from the lips of Captain Player of the con-
duct of Galloway on that very spot, but four
days previously. The facts we're thoroughly
conclusive as to the guilt Of the arrested man.
His own hands had sought to cover up from
human eyes the grave around which they were
now gathered, and into which they were ga
zing with an all absorbing interest, awaiting
its terrible revelation. His accomplice-per-
haps most unwilling one-had been found
murdered in the recesses of the swamp, and
by whose hands no one now entertained rea-
sonable doubt. The constables led the pale
but callous criminal up to the foot OF the
grave, and there he stood, with stolid, COM
posed face, condemned by every heart and
scorned by every eye.


A considerable quantity of earth had been
thrown out !; and now the spades were han
died more cautiously and carefully, as if those
who piled them shrank, with natural feel
ing of tenderness, from rudely touching the
senseless clay Of the dead. At last the folds
of coarse piece of bagging came in view, and
spades and shovels were thrown aside, and
those rough framed but tender-hearted men
employed their hands in throwing out the
earth, and gently lifted from the grave the
body wrapped in its coarse winding sheet.


They laid it at the feet of him who should
have been the chief mourner there, but who
stood and looked down upon the coarse and
bloody winding cloth with fearless and pitt
less eye. Tender hands gently opened the
folds and exposed the mutilated body to sight.
but his eye still kept its cold and remorseless
look. The face was beautiful even in death,
and the deep strokes, that had cloven the
skull and dis6gured the body with many and
fearful wounds, had spared the beautiful face,
whose gentleness, it seemed, might have
touched the heart, even of monster. He,
who had planned this horrible deed, looked
upon the soft cheeks and the pale lips-once
dear to him-with face as unmoved as
rock.


A murmur of pity and cry of execration
broke from the throng, and startled even him,
for moment, from his stolid composure.


A few months later, and he heard yet loud
er cries of execration and curses, stern and
deep, that startled him yet more. 1t was
when he was mounting the steps to the gal
lows, whilea haunting shadow, robed in white,
seemed to stand before him, and roar like
that of an angry sea, rising from thousand
pitiless breasts, rang in his ears! ""


And yet bis own hand had not dealt one Of
those many blows that let out the life of that
unhappy woman, whose sad fate it was, to
stand at the altar by his side, and to become
the victim of his rage or coldness. There was
more terrible tragedy involved in the perpe'
tration of the deed, than the testimony direct
lydisclosed. There stood out, from the facts
disclosed at the trial, the silhouette of slave
kneeling at his feet and entreating to be spared
from consummating horrid murder, from
which bloody work hehad fled in horror when
his deed was but half done. Forced to return
and complete the diabolical deed of blood,
with hand unsteady from the extremity of
his horror, his blood, too, was remorselessly
shed, that there might be no one left to tell
the story of most abominable crime.


Some, who know not how "deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked" is the hu.
man heart, may fancy that the writer has
drawn these details from the realm Of fiction
but this simple narrative is an unadorned and
too truthful reproduction of the records Of
the criminal court; and there are many, yet
living, who, when they read this story, will
shudder as they recall to mind the incidents
of the trial and execution of portly and re-
spectacle looking man, Of the better class,
who sought with all his wealth but in vain
to buy respite from the gallows, to which
most diabolical crime had justly doomed
him.