opened at the City Hall, and found actually to contain a pair of old
shoes, and a pair of old boots!--but they did not conclude that these were
incendiary.

Mr. Smith now came to the prison and told me that the examination had been
completed, and nothing found against me; but that it would not be safe for
me to leave the prison immediately. It was agreed that I should remain in
prison until after night-fall, and then steal secretly away, being let
out by the keeper, and pass unnoticed to the house of my old and tried
friend Mr. Boylan. Accordingly I was discharged between nine and ten
o'clock. I went by the back way leading to Mr. Boylan's; but soon and
suddenly a large company of men sprang upon me, and instantly I found
myself in their possession. They conducted me sometimes high above ground
and sometimes dragging me along, but as silently as possible, in the
direction of the gallows, which is always kept standing upon the Common,
or as it is called "the pines," or "piny old field." I now expected to
pass speedily into the world of spirits; I thought of that unseen region
to which I seemed to be hastening; and then my mind would return to my
wife and children, and the labors I had made to redeem them from bondage.
Although I had the money to pay for them according to a bargain already
made, it seemed to me some white man would get it, and they would die in
slavery, without benefit from my exertions and the contributions of my
friends. Then the thought of my own death, to occur in a few brief
moments, would rush over me, and I seemed to bid adieu in spirit to all
earthly things, and to hold communion already with eternity. But at length
I observed those who were carrying me away, changed their course a little
from the direct line to the gallows, and hope, a faint beaming, sprung up
within me; but then as they were taking me to the woods, I thought they
intended to murder me there, in a place where they would be less likely to
be interrupted than in so public a spot as where the gallows stood. They