"If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it now."

For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his
strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and
saying, "Euchred, old man!" held out his hand. Tennessee's Partner
took it in his own, and saying, "I just dropped in as I was passin' to
see how things was gettin' on," let the hand passively fall, and
adding that "it was a warm night," again mopped his face with his
handkerchief, and without another word withdrew.

The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled
insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch--who, whether bigoted, weak,
or narrow, was at least incorruptible--firmly fixed in the mind of
that mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's
fate; and at the break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet
it at the top of Marley's Hill.

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how
perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly
reported, with the addition of a warning moral and example to all
future evil-doers, in the "Red Dog Clarion," by its editor, who was
present, and to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader.
But the beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth
and air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the
joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and above all, the infinite
serenity that thrilled through each, was not reported, as not being a
part of the social lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was
done, and a life, with its possibilities and responsibilities, had
passed out of the misshapen thing that dangled between earth and sky,