Limbo Lane is a world on the outside of the world; but it had learned,
when deprived of one or more of the five senses, to make another sense
supply the deficiency. Each one knew that it was nearly eight, and that
Murray was to go to the chair at eight. There is also in the many Limbo
Lanes an aristocracy of crime. The man who kills in the open, who beats
his enemy or pursuer down, flushed by the primitive emotions and the
ardor of combat, holds in contempt the human rat, the spider, and the
snake.

So, of the seven condemned only three called their farewells to Murray
as he marched down the corridor between the two guards--Bonifacio,
Marvin, who had killed a guard while trying to escape from the prison,
and Bassett, the train-robber, who was driven to it because the
express-messenger wouldn't raise his hands when ordered to do so. The
remaining four smoldered, silent, in their cells, no doubt feeling their
social ostracism in Limbo Lane society more keenly than they did the
memory of their less picturesque offences against the law.

Murray wondered at his own calmness and nearly indifference. In the
execution room were about twenty men, a congregation made up of prison
officers, newspaper reporters, and lookers-on who had succeeded

* * * * * *

Here, in the very middle of a sentence, the hand of Death interrupted
the telling of O. Henry's last story. He had planned to make this story
different from his others, the beginning of a new series in a style he
had not previously attempted. "I want to show the public," he said,
"that I can write something new--new for me, I mean--a story without
slang, a straightforward dramatic plot treated in a way that will