Then he spoke of the tender white arms that clung so lovingly round her parent’s neck, how they wuz lifted up in frantic appeal and vain to her destroyer that bleak night, and wuz now folded up to be lifted no more till she met that man at the bar of God.  And then the little arm would be raised and point him out “murderer.”  The sweet eyes, full of God’s avenging wrath, would smite him as accursed from God’s presence forever.

And then he depictered it all how she would be taken to His own heart by Him “who said that He would carry the lambs in His bosom.”  And this poor wounded lamb, He would hold more tenderly than any other, while the murderer! the villian! the asassin! would be hurled downward into everlasting burning, where he would dwell forever and forever in the midst of unquenchable flames, in partial payment of that deed of hisen.

Why, when he said them last words about the prisoner, folks looked so relieved and pleased that their tears almost dried.

And the saloon-keeper, who sot right in front of me, hollered out—­“Amen, amen, so mote it be!”

He wuz a Methodist, he had a right to holler.  And folks looked approvin’ at him for it.

But I didn’t—­no, fur from it.  I kep up a-thinkin’ what I read—­

“That the prisoner wuz a good-hearted man, only drink made a fiend and a fool of him.”  And that he said solemn “that he did not remember one thing that had taken place after he had taken his three first drinks up in that saloon, till he sobered up and found himself in that deserted old barn, with the little dead body by his side, little delicate creeter, dead and frozen, with all of the black future of desperate remorse and agony for him a-lookin’ at him in the stare of her open blue eyes.”

Sweet little forget-me-not eyes, like two spring violets frozen in a drift of snow.  What strange things I read in ’em, with my tears a-fallin’ fast onto ’em!

They seemed full of mute questionin’.  They seemed to be lookin’ up through the blue sky clear up to God’s throne.  They seemed to almost compel a answer from divine justice as to what wuz the cause of her murder.  To appeal dumbly to the God of Justice and Mercy to wipe out this curse from our land—­the curse that wuz causin’ jest such murders, and jest such agonies, all over our land—­sendin’ out to the gallows and down to perdition jest such criminals.

The little coffin had to be put out in the yard, as I say, so the crowd could walk past it.

And there the little golden head and white face lay for ’em all to see.  But nobody seemed to see in ’em what I see.  For amongst the many curses of the murderer that I heard, not one word did I hear about the man that caused the murder, about the voters and upholders of that man, about the Goverment that wuz in partnership with that man and went shares with him, and for the sake of a few cents had dealt out that agony, that shame, and that criminality.