After this event, and nearly half a century ago, I was standing on the street in Vicksburg. It was early in the morning, and the city unusually quiet. My attention was attracted in the direction of the jail by women running indoors and men rushing along the street; I saw sticks, stones, and bricks flying, and men running as in pursuit of some wild animal, and as I caught a glimpse of the figure of the retreating man, the sharp sound of a rifle gun rang out upon the morning air. Following on to a spot on the street where a large crowd of men had collected, I saw the face of a dead man as the body was being turned over by one of the bystanders. The lineaments of the cold, marble face, spoke in a language not to be mistaken--that the dead was, in life, a _brave man_. I soon learned that the name of the dead man was “Alonzo Phelps,” and that he had been tried for the crime of murder and sentenced by the court to be hanged by the neck until he was dead, and this was the day for his execution; that he had broken, or found an opportunity to leave the jail, and nothing would stop him but the rifle-gun in the hands of an officer of the law. I also learned that he had written a confession of his crimes, the manuscript of which was then in the jail, for he had knocked the keeper down with a stone ink-stand, with which he had been furnished to write his confession. By the politeness of the jailor I was permitted to examine the confession, which closed with these remarkable words, “_To-morrow is the day appointed for my execution, but I will not hang._” The confession was afterward published. I read it many times, but have forgotten most of it. I remember he said the first man he ever murdered was in Europe, and that he was compelled, for safety, to flee the country and come to America. There was nothing so unusual in this, but the manner in which he disposed of his victim was singular, and more particularly the revelation he gave of his thoughts at the time. He said he carried the body to a graveyard, and, with a spade that had been left there, he shoveled all of the dirt out of a newly-made grave until he came to the coffin. He then laid the body of the murdered man on the coffin and refilled the grave. “I then,” says he, “left the graveyard, and spent the balance of the night in reflections. How strange, I thought, it would be for two spirits, on the last day, to find themselves in the same grave.” “I thought,” says he, “if the relatives of the rightful owner of the grave should, in after years, conclude to move the bones of their kinsman, when they dug them up there would be two skulls, four arms, and so on, and how it would puzzle them to get the bones of their kinsman.”