But, as he met the sheriff on the common, the latter told him that it
would be impossible to take the criminals through the crowd without a
strong guard, and before that could arrive, they would be murdered by the
exasperated populace. They were then tied up again, and the torch applied.
The flames arose around the unhappy victims. The curling smoke soon hid
their dusky forms from view, while their shrieks and cries for mercy grew
fainter and fainter, as the fierce fire shrivelled up their forms, till at
last nothing but the crackling of the flames was heard, and the shouting,
savage crowd grew still. As the fire subsided, the two wretched creatures,
crisped to a cinder, remained to tell, for the hundredth time, to what
barbarous deeds terror and passion may lead men.

Some of the negroes went laughing to the place of execution, indulging in
all sorts of buffoonery to the last, and mocking the crowd which
surrounded them.

All protested their innocence to the last, and if they had confessed
previously, retracted before death their statements and accusations. But
this contradiction of themselves, to-morrow denying what to-day they had
solemnly sworn on the Bible to be true, instead of causing the authorities
to hesitate, and consider how much terror and the hope of pardon had to do
with it, convinced them still more of the strength and dangerous nature of
the conspiracy, and they went to work with a determination and
recklessness which made that summer the bloodiest and most terrific in the
annals of New York. No lawyer was found bold enough to step forward and
defend these poor wretches, but all volunteered their services to aid the
Government in bringing them to punishment. The weeks now, as they rolled
on, were freighted with terror and death, and stamped with scenes that
made the blood run cold. This little town, on the southern part of
Manhattan Island was wholly given to panic, and a nameless dread of some