They replaced the bricks, covered the debris and waited until the following night.
At eleven o'clock they cut the manacles and Coppoc crawled out first. He had barely touched the ground when Cook followed. They glanced about the yard and it was deserted. They strained their eyes to make out the figure of the guard who passed the brick wall. He was not in sight. It was a good omen. Lenhart had no doubt foreseen their escape and dropped to the street outside.
They saw that the timbers of the gallows on which they were to die had not all been fastened.
They secured two pieces of scantling and reached the top of the wall. Suddenly the dark figure of a guard moved toward them. Cook called the signal to Lenhart. But a loyal son of Virginia stood sentinel that night. The answer was a rifle shot. They started to leap and caught the flash of a bayonet below.
They walked back into the jail and surrendered to Captain Avis, their friendly keeper.
The little wife waited and watched in vain.
CHAPTER XXXIV
All uncertainty at an end to his execution, John Brown set his hand to finish the work of his life in a supreme triumph. He entered upon the task with religious joy. The old Puritan had always been an habitual writer of letters. The authorities of Virginia allowed him to write daily to his friends and relatives. He quickly took advantage of this power. The sword of Washington which he grasped on that fatal Sunday night had proven a feeble weapon. He seized a pen destined to slay a million human beings.
His soul on fire with the fixed idea that he had been ordained by God to drench a nation in blood, he joyfully began the task of creating the mob mind.
No man in history had a keener appreciation of the power of the daily press in the propaganda of crowd ideas. The daily newspaper had just blossomed into its full radiance in the modern world. No invention in the history of the race has equaled the cylinder printing press as an engine for creating crowd movements.