I SHALL welcome the hour of sunrise as I never welcomed any moment of my life.
Not until then will the fear of a reprieve leave me. Gladys is moving heaven and earth to locate the Governor. God grant that she does not succeed!
It is four forty-five. I have spent much time at the window, gazing out into the darkness. What comes after death? That is the question, I suppose, that all men ask at the end of life. I have never done so. It is a futile question—one which none of us can answer. But I believe there will be surcease from the nausea that comes to those who have known disillusion and disappointment.
Ten minutes of five—now surely I am safe from even a chance of a reprieve!
Footsteps in the corridor! Is it my escort to the gallows, or—what I fear most on earth?
A STATEMENT by the warden of Larsen Penitentiary:
“If Traylor had spent the brief period, always allotted to a criminal for a few last words, his reprieve would have reached us in time to stay the execution; but he walked calmly, unfalteringly up to the gallows and helped us, with steady hands, adjust the cap and ropes—and he was dead two minutes before the Governor’s message reached us.”
For a Grim Tale With a Terrifying
End We Recommend