At length the cart appeared on the brow of the hill, and every neck was craned for a glimpse of the poor creature who sat on the coffin--a pitiful-looking, half-dwarf mulatto, who gave you the idea of deformity and distress without your being able to tell why. He walked bravely to his place on the scaffold, singing and praying, protesting his innocence and bequeathing forgiveness to his enemies, apparently full of faith, like many others who by reason of weariness and despair have attained resignation; but the fictitious piety born of nervous excitement, and the abnormal elevation of feeling induced by continued spiritual exhortation during weeks of unrest and suspense, both gave way when his old mother, unsightly and pitiful as himself, asked leave to bid him good-bye, and came tottering to his side, saying as well as she could for the tears that choked her, "Oh, Tony! mammy ain't gwine back on you! Mammy don't b'lieve you done it, she don't keer who 'kuses you. Good-bye, my baby! good-bye! 'Twon't be long 'fo' mammy jines you an' daddy whar dar ain't no onjestice an' no mizry. Mammy ain't gwine to stay here long arter you goes." He threw up his arms with a wild, sobbing cry: "Oh, mammy! mammy! can't you do nothin' fer me? Ain't you got _no_ way to he'p me? Oh, de sun do shine so pretty, an' de leaves shakes 'bout on de trees so natchul! An' I nuvver knowed de birds to sing like dey does to-day. It ain't fa'r--no, it's not fa'r to shet me up in de groun' for what I ain't done. So many 'ginst one, an' me so little an' so po'! I ain't got a fren' on top o' de yuth. Nary one outen all dese folks, what I use ter go to shuckin's wid 'em, an' play de banjer, an' hunt possums--nary one uv 'em didn't stand up for me an' try to git me off! Not eben you, mammy, didn't try to git in jail an' gimme somethin' to wu'k my way out, an' I a-lis'nin' night an' day! Night an' day, an' you nuvver come!" "Lord! Lord! my baby!" sobbed the poor old thing, her trembling limbs hardly able to sustain the feeble frame. "What could yo' ole mammy do 'ginst all dem folks? Ef Mars' Henry couldn't make 'em let you 'lone, what could a po' ole nigger do what ain't got no money, an' no sense, an' no fren's? Lord! Lord! my blessed chile!" she sobbed, the tears raining down her withered black cheeks, "ef mammy had a hundred nakes she would put dat rope 'roun' 'em all to keep it off o' your'n." That was true, poor soul! but could avail nothing, and the appointed sentence was carried into execution. The soul of the boy returned to its Creator and its Judge, and the old mother was taken to her cabin almost as lifeless as the body that swung in the air half a mile away.