"How do you feel Mr. Barrett?"
"I feel well, thank you said he;" one of the turnkeys wos watching him, sitting up with him, and he had a light in his cell—he was ironed.
"They are putting up the scaffold," said he to me without a bit of fear.
"Yes, and I'm sorry for it," said I, "Mr. Barrett—is there anything I can do for you."
"Nothing," says he, standing up and turning down the book which he was reading, his chains clanking around his legs—"Nothing—but you see me the night before I die—tell those who employed you that Michael Barrett has made his peace with God—and is not afraid to die. Tell them," and he commenced reciting poetry like, with his eyes on the ceiling of his cell:
"Whither on the scaffold high
Or in the battle's van;
The fittest place for man to die
Is where he dies for man."
"Them's the lines as near as I can remember, for I saw them in a book after, and that made me recollect them.
"During the night they were busy in putting up the scaffold, and three or four thousand special constables were sworn in by the magistrates, cos why, they were afraid that the Fenians would rescue Barrett, and I, as well as every other man, wos armed with a six-barrelled revolver. When the morning came there must have been a hundred thousand people in the streets and all around here. Hundreds staid up all night to get a chance for a good place to look at him, and there was more than three thousand women, and as many children in the crowd around the scaffold. The top of the scaffold, I mean the frame, was about twelve feet above the street, and the platform was about six feet high, so that hevery one was able to see him. Fifteen hundred police in uniform were drawn hup around Newgate, and to prevent the crowds from pushing or rescuing the prisoner, a barricade of trees was built at a distance of two hundred feet from the scaffold hevery way. Five hundred police in plain clothes were among the crowds armed with revolvers, and troops were stationed at all the barracks in the city so as to be ready for any attempt to save his life. The crowd Sir, was for all the world like a surging sea, and people were buying and selling of histers, and liquors, ginger beer, whelks, fruit and cigars, just the same as if they were at a fair, and men and boys were crying ballads and singing, and some of them were peddling Barrett's printed confession. Now you see, Sir, that was a humbug, becos Barrett never made no confession, but they sold just as well as if he had made one, at a penny a piece.
"Well, when St. Sepulchre's bell struck eight, which is always the signal, they brought him ought, and although the air was cold and some of us were shivering from standing up so long without anything to eat or drink, he never trembled at all, but looked at every man and woman of all that wos there with a smile, and a steady look.
"'He's a game un,' I heard many a man say, and our fellows who had such hard work watching the Fenians by night and by day, had no hard feelings agin the brave fellow then. The women around the scaffold waved their handkerchiefs to him, you see, Sir, the women, bless them, are always up to such blessed games, and there was some man in the crowd when the rope was put around his neck, who wore a fur coat, and seemed like an American, who cried out as loud as he could—