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Thus we entered the camp of Hangman's Gulch for if it had been otherwise, I am sure we would have located promptly where we had seen those red-shirted men. The camp consisted merely of a closer-knit group of tents, log shacks, and a few larger buildings constructed of a queer combination of heavy hewn timbers and canvas.
"It is true," murmured Pollnitz; "she has forgotten nothing." "Forgotten!" cried she, with a wild laugh, "can I forget that I was driven through the streets like a wild beast; that I was stripped by the rough hands of the hangman's boy; that I heard behind me the scoffings and insults of the wild mob hired for the occasion; that I felt upon my naked back the cruel blows of the executioner's whip?
He found, on his accession, the terrible penal laws against the Papists in full force; the hangman's knife was yet warm with its ghastly butcher-work of quartering and disembowelling suspected Jesuits and victims of the lie of Titus Oates; the Tower of London had scarcely ceased to echo the groans of Catholic confessors stretched on the rack by Protestant inquisitors.
Just under the top of the slope, he peeked anxiously out over the prairie, ducked precipitately, and went clattering away down the hollow to the farther side; dodged around a spur of rocks, forced his horse down over a wicked jumble of boulders to level land below, and rode as if a hangman's noose were the penalty for delay.
Baggs, the housekeeper, who condescended to impart her observations to Mrs. Bustle, the lady's-maid, John Thomas, I say, decidedly advised that my lady should consult a cunning man. "What nonsense is this you have been talking to the maids, John Thomas, about the conjurer who lives in in " "In Hangman's Lane, ma'am, where the gibbet used to stand," replied John, who was bringing in the muffins.
But while they were getting the whip ready on the starboard, Jemmy Ducks was very quietly employed getting another on the larboard yard-arm, which nobody took notice of. As soon as the whip, and the cord with the hangman's noose made fast to it, were all ready, it was reported to Sir Robert by Corporal Van Spitter, who stepped up to him with his usual military salute.
We hang our worst criminals rather than behead or shoot them, in order to heap up the utmost possible shame and disgrace upon them, as well as to execute justice upon them. And what the hangman's rope is in our day, all that the cross was in our Lord's day.
There was no law forbidding a man to marry his deceased wife's scullery-maid; yet it did not happen nearly so often. It did not happen because the marriage market is managed in the spirit and by the authority of women; and women are generally conservative where classes are concerned. There is no need of the broad arrow and the fleur-de lis, the turnkey's chains or the hangman's halter.
Among the king's pamphlets in the British Museum is a tract entitled "Harry Hangman's Honour, or Glostershire Hangman's Request to the Smokers and Tobacconists of London," dated June 11th, 1655. The author writes: "The very planting of tobacco hath proved the decay of my trade, for since it hath been planted in Glostershire, especially at Winchcomb, my trade hath proved nothing worth."
When an hour later, the watchman brought the man in livery home, still stupid and covered with blood, Judge Harbottle cursed his servant roundly, swore he was drunk, threatened him with an indictment for taking bribes to betray his master, and cheered him with a perspective of the broad street leading from the Old Bailey to Tyburn, the cart's tail, and the hangman's lash.
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