Brown looked at the woman and at the little children trembling by her side and curtly answered:
"You have neighbors."
"So I have," Wilkinson agreed, "but they are not here and I cannot go for them unless you allow me."
"It matters not," Brown snapped. "Get ready, sir."
Wilkinson took up his boots to pull them on when Brown signaled his men to drag him out.
Without further words they seized him and hurried into the darkness.
They dragged him a few yards from the house into a clump of dead brush.
Weiner was the chosen headsman. He swung his big savage figure before
Wilkinson and his cutlass flashed in the starlight.
The woman inside the darkened house heard the crash of the blade against the skull and the dying groan from the lips of the father of her babies.
When the body crumpled, Weiner knelt, plunged his knife into the throat, turned it and severed the jugular vein.
Standing over the body John Brown spoke to one of his men.