The crime, though desperate, was openly committed, and there were
sufficient witnesses at his trial to make it a short one. On that
morning, neither arrest, nor friar, nor chaplain, nor jailer, nor
sheriff could wring from him one single expression of regret or
repentance for what he had done. The only reply he made them was
this--"Don't trouble me; I knew what my fate was to be, and will die
with satisfaction."
After cutting him down, his body, as we have said, was delivered to his
friends, who, having wrapped it in a quilt, conveyed it on a common car
to his own house, where he received the usual ablutions and offices of
death, and was composed upon his own bed into that attitude of the grave
which will never change.
The house was nearly filled with grave and aged people, whose
conversation was low, and impressed with solemnity, that originated from
the painful and melancholy spirit of the event that had that morning
taken place. A deal table was set lengthwise on the floor; on this were
candles, pipes, and plates of cut tobacco. In the usual cases of death
among the poor, the bed on which the corpse is stretched is festooned
with white sheets, borrowed for the occasion from the wealthier
neighbors.
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