For the first time in all her hated experience with these desperate men, she faltered and felt her courage failing her. To the high-toned and sensitive spirit of this brave and beautiful girl, there was something in this contemplated exposure of her person far more torturing than any number of lashes, however mercilessly inflicted. Death itself were a thousand times preferable, and, for the first moment in all her life, she felt like supplicating for mercy. Her hands dropped nervously and motionless at her side, and the stout-hearted heroine of the previous hour, stood in the presence of her persecutors almost stricken dumb with shame and confusion. There was no sympathy in the glaring eyes that peered with lustful and revengeful fires from behind the hideous masks of their tormentors; no sentiment of pity, no hope, no help. She was given but little time to decide. They fell upon her like hungry wolves famishing for their prey, tearing one garment off after another, she resisting with all the strength she could command, and entreating them to take her life, if they must, but to spare her this last indignity. Neither her piteous appeals nor her stubborn resistance availed her, and she lay upon the hard floor at last, naked as when born into the world, ashamed, degraded, broken in spirit, and her maidenly feelings outraged beyond any power of description. Four of the defenders of the "white man's race" seized her limbs and arms; stretched them to their fullest tension, and placing their knees thereon, held her brutally and forcibly to the floor. Her punishment was to be terrible. The "executioners" were called, and five of the band came forward. "Number one!" shouted the leader, and a stalwart member of the Klan that had sworn to uphold the "white man's government," raising his knotted strap in the air, brought it down upon the naked person of the helpless girl with the terrible force of his muscular arm, cutting through the delicate white skin and causing the blood to spurt at every stroke. He administered thirty lashes, and was succeeded by "number two" and "number three," until, as the witnesses state, one hundred and fifty lashes had been administered, and her shoulders, loins, and limbs, were literally cut into mince meat. Her screams had ceased, and her unoffending body lay still and motionless long before the punishment had ended. There was something in her young heart far beyond the dread cruelty of this infliction, and she inwardly prayed to God for death, to end her mental and bodily suffering. Lying under this great mountain of sorrow and shame, she heeded not the rude and obscene observations of her tormentors; and the unconsciousness produced by the punishment, soon placed her beyond the power to listen to them. Leaving her as one dead, and issuing the edict that if the family did not leave the country, it would be "_death!_ DEATH! DEATH!" to all, the band departed.