Nevertheless the few who, hurrying to the scene, had occasion to pass near the Vigilante headquarters, found the silent square guarded on all sides by a triple line of armed men.  The side-streets also were filled with them.  They stood in the exact alignment their constant drill had made possible, with bayonets fixed, staring straight ahead.  Three thousand were under arms.  Like the vast crowd a few squares away, they, too, stood silent and patiently waiting.

At a quarter before one the upper windows of the headquarters building were thrown open and small planked platforms were thrust from two of them.  Heavy beams were shoved out from the flat roof directly over the platforms.  From the ends of the beams dangled nooses of rope.  After this another wait ensued.  Across the silence of the intervening buildings could be heard faintly from the open windows of the church the sound of an organ, and then the measured cadences of an oration.  The funeral services had begun.  As though this were a signal, the blinds that had closed the window openings were thrown back and Cora was conducted to the end of one of the little platforms.  His face was covered with a white handkerchief and he was bound.  A moment later Casey appeared.  He had asked not to be blindfolded.  Cora stood bolt upright, motionless as a stone, but Casey’s courage broke.  If he had any hope that the boastful promises of his friends would be fulfilled by a rescue, that hope died as he looked down on the set, grim faces, on the sinister ring of steel.  His nerve then deserted him completely and he began to babble.

“Gentlemen,” he cried at them, “I am not a murderer!  I do not feel afraid to meet my God on a charge of murder!  I have done nothing but what I thought was right!  Whenever I was injured I have resented it!  It has been part of my education during twenty-nine years!  Gentlemen, I forgive you this persecution!  O God!  My poor Mother!  O God!”

It is to be noted that he said not one word of contrition nor of regret for the man whose funeral services were then going on, nor for the heartbroken wife who knelt at that coffin.  His words found no echo against that grim wall of steel.  Again ensued a wait, apparently inexplicable.  Across the intervening housetops the sound of the oration ceased.  At the door of the church a slight commotion was visible.  The coffin was being carried out.  It was placed in the hearse.  Every head was bared.  There followed a slight pause; then from overhead the church-bell boomed out once.  Another bell in the next block answered; a third, more distant, chimed in.  From all parts of the city tolled the requiem.

At the first stroke of the bell the funeral cortege moved forward toward Lone Mountain cemetery.  At the first stroke the Vigilantes as one man presented arms.  The platforms dropped, and Casey and Cora fell into eternity.

CHAPTER XV