“Do not answer me so,” persisted the now humbled and abject suppliant, “but do with me anything else you please. Cut off my ears, and cut out my tongue, and strip me naked this freezing night, and let me go. I beg you to spare my life. I want to live for my wife,—my poor absent wife. I wish to see my sister-in-law. I want time to settle my business affairs. Oh, God!” Falling upon his knees, the tears streaming from his eyes, and with his utterance choked with sobs, he continued, “I am too wicked to die. I cannot go blood-stained and unforgiven into the presence of the Eternal. Only spare me, and I will leave the country forever.” To all these, and many more petitions in the same vein, the only answer was an assurance that his pleadings were all in vain, and that he must die. Meantime, Stinson and Ray discharged volley after volley of oaths and epithets at the Vigilantes, employing all the offensive language of their copious vocabulary. At length the ropes were declared to be in readiness, and the stern command was given, “Bring up Ned Ray.” Struggling wildly in the hands of his executioners, the wretched man was strung up, the rope itself arresting his curse before it was half uttered. Being loosely pinioned, he thrust his fingers under the noose, and, by a sudden twist of his head, the knot slipped under his chin. “There goes poor Ned Ray,” whined Stinson, who a moment later was dangling in the death-agony by his side. As Stinson was being hoisted, he exclaimed, “I’ll confess.” Plummer immediately remarked, “We’ve done enough already, twice over, to send us to hell.” Plummer’s time had come. “Bring him up,” was the stern order. No one stirred. Stinson and Ray were common villains; but Plummer, steeped as he was in infamy, was a man of intellect, polished, genial, affable. There was something terrible in the idea of hanging such a man. Plummer himself had ceased all importunity. The crisis of self-abasement had passed, hope fled with it, and he was now composedly awaiting his fate. As one of the Vigilantes approached him, he met with the request, “Give a man time to pray.” “Certainly,” replied the Vigilante, “but say your prayers up there,” at the same time pointing to the cross-beam of the gallows-frame. The guilty man uttered no more prayers. Standing, erect under the gallows, he took off his necktie, and, throwing it over his shoulder to a young man who had boarded with him, he said, “Keep that to remember me by,” and, turning to the Vigilantes, he said, “Now, men, as a last favor, let me beg that you will give me a good drop.” The fatal noose being adjusted, several of the strongest of the Vigilantes lifted the frame of the unhappy criminal as high as they could reach, when, letting it suddenly fall, he died quickly, without a struggle.