It had been a long wait on the hill, with the crowd shivering under a wind from upriver, but at last, just before noon there was a stir on the porch of the jail.

An ugly old man appeared there, shuffling in carpet slippers, wearing a long-tailed coat and black hat, blinking in the light of the sun, which had just emerged. Men standing near by caught the odor of him and his time in the jail.

The prisoner walked stiffly, and was drawn forward by the pain of a kidney ailment, so that his step seemed tentative and doddering. He handed a folded bit of paper to his jailer, who rustled it as if to read it, but the old man spoke, and the jailer thrust the note into his pocket.

The old man craned his wattled neck to peer at soldiers moving in the roadway beneath - three infantry companies wheeling into line. Other troops waited beyond.

"I had no idea Governor Wise thought my murder so important," the prisoner said. The nasal voice was unhurried and bitter; the set of the cracked lips betrayed no fear.

He went forward as if accompanied by friends, down a flight of stairs with his jailer on one arm and the sheriff on the other. They clambered into a waiting wagon, and when the old man had settled himself on a coffin between the seats, the driver snapped his whip over the rumps of two white farm horses. The prisoner paid no heed to the box on which he sat, and all about, at their distance, the troops watched with covert curiosity the stiff-backed old man who bore himself as if impatient to die. The wagon crawled behind the militia infantry, its wheels strewing the merest dust, and the coffin trailing an odor of fresh lumber.

The wagon went up toward the crest of the hill, where the gallows were.

"A man couldn't have asked for prettier weather," old Brown said. Neither the sheriff nor the jailer looked at the prisoner.

The old man's hatchet face had a pleasant, almost happy, expression as he gazed around at the country under the dull sky. Hills tumbled to the west, incredibly blue in the distance; to the east, where the waters of the Shenandoah and the Potomac met, the river banks loomed in vast shoulders. The prisoner saw above these the smoke of Harpers Ferry, where ruin had come to him.

The wagon turned into a hollow square of troops, one thousand of them, and went past a piece of artillery which gaped toward the gallows with gunners at attention. The old man raised his head once more to the valley of the Shenandoah.

"This is a beautiful country," he said. "I never truly had the pleasure of seeing it before."

"None like it," the sheriff said.

The prisoner was first to mount the scaffold, and when he stood above the crowd, he snatched off his dusty hat, which he dropped at his feet. His hair rose in an unkempt gray shock.

Two men fitted the white hood over his head and adjusted the rope. In the last glimpse of light, the prisoner caught sight of the red and gray uniforms of cadets of the Virginia Military Institute who stood between the regiments of militia. Once the hood was on, the jailer stirred his feet, as if adapting himself to a new sense of relief.

Half a dozen hands thrust over the scaffold, groping for the prisoner's fallen hat, and one of them dragged it off, evading the jailer's vicious kicks. Subdued sounds came from below, where unseen men fought over the souvenir.

The old man's voice was muffled by the hood. "I can't see, gentlemen. You must lead me."

The sheriff and a guard led him to the trap, where he stood in the broken slippers, waiting. The militia stamped endlessly in the dust below, going back to its places in the square.

"You want a private signal, now, just before?" the sheriff asked.

"It's no matter to me. If only they would not keep me waiting so long." The sheriff and the jailer did not now recognize the old voice they knew so well; it was formal and somehow remote. It was the first slight sign of fear or remorse or even hesitation the old man had shown them, and the two officers exchanged glances of veiled triumph.

The militia was ten minutes at its stumbling, while the old man waited, now and then bending his knees to make himself comfortable. Each of the other figures on the scaffold seemed to grow more rigid as time passed. The sheriff looked far down the hill on every hand, creasing his brow over an expression of childlike earnestness, as if he entertained the fear that someone might storm the hilltop, crowned as it was with a mass of troops, in an effort to deliver the old man.

The very young men of the Virginia Military Institute smirked at the awkward militia; but their smiles were fleeting and hidden from the bearded officer who sat his horse on their right front, as if daydreaming. The commander was a sorry figure, clasped tightly in a shabby coat. He was the obscure Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Artillery Tactics from the Institute in Lexington.

"Lookit old Tom Fool," one of the cadets whispered. "Another wink, and he's asleep."

"Giving orders to God," another scoffed. "We heard him last night, apraying for old Brown's soul like a damned niggerlover."

Major Thomas Jonathan Jackson, almost as if he had heard the words of the child soldiers, stirred and turned his gaze down the line. "Gentlemen," he piped. The cadets fell silent.

From the ranks of the Richmond militia across the square, a thin-shouldered infantryman glared at the hooded figure on the scaffold. The militiaman's eyes were dark with excitement, as if he had quite lost himself in the spectacle. He was Private John Wilkes Booth. Major Jackson galloped between the companies, herding them into order, and then settled once more, head lowered, withdrawing into his wrinkled uniform. Already he was thinking of writing a letter to his wife, a description of old Brown's end. A few nights earlier he had reassured her:

Charlestown, Nov. 28, 1859

I reached here last night in good health and spirits. Seven of us slept in the same room. I am much more pleased than I expected to be; the people appear to be very kind. There are about 1,000 troops here, and everything is quiet so far. We don't expect any trouble. The excitement is confined to more distant points. Do not give yourself any concern about me. I am comfortable, for a temporary military post.

There was at length an end to the shuffling of feet in the field, and on the scaffold there were slight movements. The prisoner muttered to his jailer, "Be quick, Avis."

The jailer tightened the noose, stepped backward, and the sheriff took a hatchet from a guard. The glinting blade parted a rope, thumped into the wood, and the old man dropped through the platform. The rope whipped back and forth, spinning, rasping against the scaffold, and then began to slow its motion. No sound came from the field where the watchers stood.

After an interval, Major J. T. L. Preston, the Institute Latin professor, shouted, as if he read from a paper - so loudly that all of them heard:

"So perish all such enemies of Virginia! All such enemies of the Union! All such enemies of the human race!"

The troops were ordered at ease, and stood in the square for half an hour longer, while the dark bundle stilled on the scaffold. A band of men went there, and the body was cut down. The soldiers moved off, and behind them rose the clatter of hammers on the coffin case. The jailer, thrusting a hand into his pocket, drew forth the paper on which the old man had written. He read its trembling script.

Charlestown, Va., 2nd December, 1859.

I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land; will never be purged away; but with Blood...

The jailer shook his head, grinning uncertainly, and passed the paper to the sheriff, who was to deliver it to the widow.

It was no later than twelve thirty, but the shadow of the gallows already lay across the dust of the slope, where the Virginia soldiers had marched and the horses of their officers had torn the cold turf.

Major Jackson rose directly from supper and sat down to the writing of a letter to his wife. With his bluff manner of detachment, he closed his mind to the passage of the others in his room:

December 2nd. John Brown was hung today at about half-past eleven A.M. He behaved with unflinching firmness.... The coffin was of black walnut, enclosed in a box of poplar.... He was dressed in a black frock-coat, black pantaloons, black vest, black slouch hat, white socks, and slippers of predominating red. There was nothing about his neck but his shirt collar....

Brown fell through about five inches, his knees falling on a level with the position occupied by his feet before the rope was cut. With the fall his arms, below the elbows, flew up horizontally, his hands clinched; and his arms gradually fell, but by spasmodic motions. There was very little motion of his person for several moments, and soon the wind blew his lifeless body to and fro.

His face, upon the scaffold, was turned a little east of south, and in front of him were the cadets, commanded by Major Gilham. My command was still in front of the cadets, all facing south... altogether it was an imposing but very solemn scene.

I was much impressed with the thought that before me stood a man in the full vigor of health, who must in a few moments enter eternity. I sent up the petition that he might be saved. Awful was the thought that he might in a few minutes receive the sentence, "Depart ye wicked, into ever-lasting fire!" I hope that he was prepared to die, but I am doubtful. He refused to have a minister with him. His wife visited him last evening.

His body was taken to the jail, and at six o'clock P.M. was sent to his wife at Harpers Ferry. When it arrived, the coffin was opened, and his wife saw the remains, after which it was again opened at the depot before leaving for Baltimore, lest there should be an imposition. We leave for home via Richmond tomorrow.