The town of Sing Sing was awake at daylight. It was the most exciting and important day of its history. The women, even the pitiful ones, arose with a pleasurable flutter and donned their Sunday frocks. The matrons dressed the children in their brightest and best, and laid the gala cover on the baby carriage. The men of the village took a half-holiday and made themselves as smart as their women. The saloon keepers stocked their shelves and spread their counters with tempting array of corned beef, cold ham, cheese, crackers, pickles, and pretzels.

By ten o’clock a hundred teams had driven into the town, and were hitched to every post, housed in every stable. A number stood along that part of the road which commanded a view of the prison towers.

The women sat about on the slope opposite the prison, pushing the baby carriages absently back and forth, or gossiping with animation. Other women crowded up the bluff, settling themselves comfortably to await, with what patience they could muster, the elevation of the black flag.

The reporters and witnesses of the execution sat on a railing near the main entrance, smoking cigarettes and discussing probabilities. Inside and out the atmosphere of intense and suppressed excitement was trying to even the stout nerves of the head-keeper. The assistant keepers, in bright new caps, moved about with an air of portentous solemnity.

Never had Sing Sing seen a more beautiful day. The sky was a dome of lapis-lazuli. The yellow sun sparkled down on the imposing mediÆval pile of towers and turrets, on the handsome grey buildings above the green slopes near by, on the graveyard with its few dishonoured dead, on the gayly dressed expectant people, as exhilaratingly as had death and dishonour never been. The river and the wooded banks beyond were as sweet and calm as if the great building with the men in the watch towers were some feudal castle, in which, perchance, a captured princess pined.

The head-keeper walked once or twice to the telegraph table in a corner of the office, and asked the girl in charge if any message had come.

“It’s the wish that’s father to the thought,” he said to the warden; “but I can’t help hoping for a reprieve or a commutation or something. Poor thing, I feel awful sorry for her.”

“Damn her,” growled his chief. “She’s too high-toned for me. When I read the death warrant to her this morning she turned her back on me square.”

“She’s awful proud, and I guess she has a hard time keeping up; but it ain’t no time for resentment. I must say I did think Mr. Bourke’d save her, and I can’t help thinking he will yet.”

“Time’s getting short,” said the warden, with a dry laugh. “It’s 10.40, and the execution takes place at 11.12 sharp.”

“Couldn’t you make some excuse to put it off a day or so? It ain’t like Mr. Bourke.”

“Not much. Off she goes at 11.12.” And he got up heavily and shuffled out.

The head-keeper took a decanter of brandy from the sideboard and placed it, with a number of glasses, on the table. Then he called in the newspaper men and other witnesses.

He wandered about restlessly as the men entered and drank in silence. He carried a stick of malacca topped with silver. One or two of the newspaper men shuddered as it caught their eye. They knew its hideous portent.

“Guess we’d better go,” he said, after one more fruitless trip to the telegraph table. “It takes time to go through those underground passages.”

As the great gates were about to close behind them he turned suddenly and called a guard.

“If it should so happen that Mr. Bourke should come, or telegraph, or that anything should happen before—11.16—I can delay it that long—just you be on hand to make a bolt. It ain’t like Mr. Bourke to sit down and do nothing. I feel it in my bones that he’s moving heaven and earth this minute.”