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It was the next year that the Fenwick conspiracy blew up, which is a matter of public history now, and which ended in the execution of Sir John and many more, who suffered manfully for their treason, and who were attended to Tyburn by my lady's father Dean Armstrong, Mr. Collier, and other stout nonjuring clergymen, who absolved them at the gallows-foot.
He galloped the stolen horse over highway and common, and from one county into another, but showed Retribution ever galloping after, seizing the malefactor in the country fair, carrying him before the justice, and never unlocking his manacles till he dropped them at the gallows-foot. Heaven be pitiful to the sinner! The clergyman acted the scene. He whispered in the criminal's ear at the cart.
If you have life enough left to be carried to the gallows-foot, you shall never cheat the hangman." Bruce looked up into the speaker's face for some moments. Gradually the agonized appeal in his wild eyes died away into vacancy; an expression, half cunning, half amused, stole over his face; and, leaning gently back, he began pulling threads out of the coverlet, laughing low.
I swore to her, if ever it crossed my path, to hunt it down; never to let it rest; to pursue it with the bitterest and most unrelenting animosity; to vent upon it the hatred that I deeply felt, and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by draggin it, if I could, to the very gallows-foot. She was right. He came in my way at last.
She produced the little halfpenny tract, which to this day is sold at the gallows-foot upon the death of every offender. "I've seen a many men turned off, to be sure; but I never did see one who bore it more like a man than he did." "My dear," said the gentleman addressed as Doctor, "he was as cool and as brave as steel, and no more minded hanging than tooth-drawing."
It seems like it; and yet it's hard lines to think a fellow must grow up and get on the cross in spite of himself, and come to the gallows-foot at last, whether he likes it or not. The parson here isn't bad at all. He's a man and a gentleman, too; and he's talked and read to me by the hour.
"Alack, sir knight," laughed Beltane, "and is it my looks afflict thee so? 'Tis true we be wild rogues hereabout, evil company for gentle knights. Amongst us ye shall find men new broke from the gallows-foot and desperate knaves for whom the dungeon yawns. As for me, these gyves upon my wrists were riveted there by folly, for fool is he that trusteth to woman and the ways of woman.
Well, the fatal day came, and John was brought to the gallows, where a large crowd was gathered to see the execution; and there stood John, with the clergyman imploring him to confess, and free his mind of a load of falsehood; and the hangman waiting with the noose in his hand, waiting to slip it over poor John's head, when suddenly a beautiful little lady, dressed in white and silver, appeared in the midst of the crowd gathered at the gallows-foot.
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