“Well, ‘long toward night the guard came and brought me that new suit of clothes over on the bed, and I guess I’ve got to put ‘em on pretty quick. Of course, the guard’s been as nice as he could be. He didn’t tell me what they’s for, but I knew all the same. I know they don’t hang nobody in their old clothes. I s’pose there’ll be a good many people there, judges and doctors and ministers and lawyers, and the newspapers, and the friends of the sheriff, and politicians, and all, and of course it wouldn’t look right to have me hung up there before ‘em all in my old clothes,—it would be about like wearin’ old duds to a party or to church—so I’ve got to put on them new ones. They’re pretty good, and they look as if they’re all wool, don’t you think? “Well, a little while after they brought me the clothes, I seen the guard come up with a telegram in his hand. I could see in his face it wa’n’t no use, so of course I wa’n’t quite so nervous when I read it. But I opened it to make sure. The lawyer said that the gov’nor wouldn’t do nothin’. Then, of course, ‘twas all off. Still he said he’d go back about midnight. I don’t know whether he meant it, or said it to brace me up a little and kind of let me down easier. “Of course, the gov’nor could wake up in the night and do it, if he wanted to, and I s’pose such things has been done. I’ve read ‘bout ‘em stoppin’ it after a man got up on the scaffold. You remember about the gov’nor of Ohio, don’t you? He come here to Chicago to some convention, and a man was to be hung in Columbus that day, and the gov’nor forgot it till just about the time, and then he tried for almost an hour to get the penitentiary on the long distance telephone, and he finally got ‘em just as the man was goin’ up on the scaffold. Such things has happened, but of course, I don’t s’pose they’ll happen to me. I never had much luck in anything, and I guess I’ll be hung all right. “It seems queer, don’t it, how I’m talkin’ to you here, and the guard out there, and ever’body good to me, and in just a little while they’re goin’ to take me out there and hang me! I don’t believe I could do it, even if I was a sheriff and got ten thousand dollars a year for it, but I s’pose it has to be done. “Well, now I guess I’ve told you all about how ever’thing happened and you und’stand how it was. I s’pose you think I’m bad, and I don’t want to excuse myself too much, or make out I’m any saint. I know I never was, but you see how a feller gets into them things when he ain’t much different from ever’body else. I know I don’t like crime, and I don’t believe the other does. I just got into a sort of a mill and here I am right close up to that noose.