discovered. At last, when they had all given over looking for her, towards
midnight, a cart drove up to the door. Doctor, said the driver, I have a
dead negro here, and I'm told she belongs to you. The Doctor came out with
a lantern, and as I stood by my master's carriage, waiting for him to come
out and go home, the Doctor ordered me to mount the cart and look at the
corpse; I did so, and looked full in that face by the light of the
lantern, and saw and knew, notwithstanding the horrible change that had
been effected by the work of death, upon those once beautiful features, it
was Mary. Poor Mary, driven to distraction by what had happened, she had
sought salvation in the depths of the Chesapeake Bay that night. Next day
the neighbourhood was searched throughout, and the country was placarded
for Dan; and Doctor Tillotson and Mr. Burmey, young William's
father-in-law, offered one thousand dollars for him alive, and five
hundred for him dead; and although every blackleg in the neighbourhood was
on the alert, it was full two months before he was captured. At length
poor Dan was caught and brought by the captors to Mr. Burmey's, where he
was tried principally by Burmey's two sons, Peter and John, and that night
was kept in irons in Burmey's cellar. The next day Dan was led into the
field in the presence of about three thousand of us. A staple was driven
into the stump of a tree, with a chain attached to it, and one of his
handcuffs was taken off and brought through the chain, and then fastened
on his hand again. A pile of pine wood was built around him. At eight
o'clock the wood was set on fire, and when the flames blazed round upon
the wretched man, he began to scream and struggle in a most awful manner.
Many of our women fainted, but not one of us was allowed to leave until
the body of poor Dan was consumed. The unearthly sounds that came from the
blazing pile, as poor Dan writhed in the agonies of death, it is beyond
the power of my pen to describe. After a while all was silent, except the
cracking of the pine wood as the fire gradually devoured it with the prize
that it contained. Poor Dan had ceased to struggle--he was at rest.