“What for?” I asked. “Why do you want him?” “Never mind,” was his answer, “you shall have him back again; but he’s wanted. You’ve got to get off.” His manner was peremptory. I dismounted. They took my picket rope, a nearly new one, three-quarters of an inch in diameter and forty feet long, and, making a noose in one end, tossed it over a limb twelve or fifteen feet up from the ground. “Will you tell us,” said the leader of the Vigilantes, addressing the condemned man, “who gave you the pistol?” I gathered from his manner that he had been trying to induce him to reveal his accomplices on the way to the tree. The wretch looked up at the rope swinging above him, and said: “Will you give me my life if I tell?” “We promise nothing,” said his questioner, a short, bullet-headed man with a singularly resolute face, “but,” he added, “it won’t be worse for you if you do.” “Then I won’t say,” answered the prisoner. “Have you any friends that you want to say good-bye to?” he asked again; and, the prisoner nodding assent, he called out to the crowd, “If there are any friends of this man here who wish to speak to him, they can do so, one at a time.” A dissolute-looking gambler in a very seedy frock-coat, with his hands in his pockets, slouched forward with uneasy swagger. The guards examined him to see that he had no concealed weapons, and then admitted him to the prisoner. He sauntered up to him with an ill-concealed nervousness which he tried to carry off as easy nonchalance. “Wal, Joe, old man,” he observed to his friend, “you’ve got to the jumping-off place this time, I guess.” The prisoner gave a ghastly grin. “Say, old man,” he continued, drawing one hand from his trousers’ pocket, and rubbing it on the unshaven cheek of the condemned man, where three or four days’ stubbly growth of hair bristled, “You’d better ax ’em to let you shave this off. It might be in the way of the rope.” The prisoner only groaned at the disgusting pleasantry. “Take him away,” said the leader to the guards. “No more of this. Now,” he said to the doomed man, “do you want to pray? Will you have a minister?” No answer was returned; but there was a slight movement among the crowd--men looking to right and left as if searching for the sight of a black coat; but it was in vain--no one like a minister was to be found. “Do you wish to send a message to anybody?” asked the leader. “I’ve a wife in Philadelphia,” said the murderer through his sobs. A notebook was instantly produced. “Your name, your real name?” said the Vigilante. “Joe Carr.” “Her address?” The prisoner mumbled something I couldn’t hear. It was a hangman’s knot that had been tied in my rope, and now the noose was put over his head, and settled round his neck; the other end of the rope tossed over the bough was made fast with a turn round the trunk of the tree; the horse was brought alongside him. “Now say a prayer if you want to,” said the Vigilante.