“By the hell-spawned and hell-bound, trebly damned old blotch upon creation's face, John McNeil, until recently by the grace of bayonets, Tom Fletcher, and the devil, sheriff of St. Louis county.”
“Murdered!”
“Shot to death!!”
“There was our poor, handsome, gallant boyhood friend Tom Sidener—”
“As pure a soul as ever winged its flight from blood-stained sod to that God who will yet to all eternity damn the fiendish butcher, McNeil.”
“Poor Tom!”
“He was engaged to be married to a young lady in Monroe county.”
“When he learned he was to be shot, he sent for his wedding suit, which had just been made, declaring that if he couldn't be married in it; he intended to die in it.”
“Arrayed in his elegant black broad cloth, and his white silk vest, when he mounted his coarse plank coffin, in the wagon that was to bear him to his death he looked as if he was going to be married instead of shot.”
“The very guards cried like children when they bade him goodbye.”