you no further, but separate you, and then loose one of you, and he can relieve the others.’  So with that, Sullivan took De Pontius to the left of where Kempthorne was sitting.  I took Mathieu to the right.  I tied a strap round his legs, and shot him with a revolver.  He yelled, I ran from him with my gun in my hand, I sighted Kempthorne, who had risen to his feet.  I presented the gun, and shot him behind the right ear; his life’s blood welled from him, and he died instantaneously.  Sullivan had shot.  De Pontius in the meantime, and then came to me.  I said, ‘Look to Mathieu,’ indicating the spot where he lay.  He shortly returned and said, ’I had to “chiv” that fellow, he was not dead,’ a cant word, meaning that he had to stab him.  Returning to the road we passed where De Pontius lay and was dead.  Sullivan said, ’This is the digger, the others were all storekeepers; this is the digger, let’s cover him up, for should the others be found, they’ll think he done it and sloped,’ meaning he had gone.  So with that we threw all the stones on him, and then left him.  This bloody work took nearly an hour and a half from the time we stopped the men.”

Anyone who reads that confession will think that the man who wrote it was destitute of emotions, destitute of feeling.  That is partly true.  As regarded others he was plainly without feeling—­utterly cold and pitiless; but as regarded himself the case was different.  While he cared nothing for the future of the murdered men, he cared a great deal for his own.  It makes one’s flesh creep to read the introduction to his confession.  The judge on the bench characterized it as “scandalously blasphemous,” and it certainly reads so, but Burgess meant no blasphemy.  He was merely a brute, and whatever he said or wrote was sure to expose the fact.  His redemption was a very real thing to him, and he was as jubilantly happy on the gallows as ever was Christian martyr at the stake.  We dwellers in this world are strangely made, and mysteriously circumstanced.  We have to suppose that the murdered men are lost, and that Burgess is saved; but we cannot suppress our natural regrets.

“Written in my dungeon drear this 7th of August, in the year of Grace, 1866.  To God be ascribed all power and glory in subduing the rebellious spirit of a most guilty wretch, who has been brought, through the instrumentality of a faithful follower of Christ, to see his wretched and guilty state, inasmuch as hitherto he has led an awful and wretched life, and through the assurance of this faithful soldier of Christ, he has been led and also believes that Christ will yet receive and cleanse him from all his deep-dyed and bloody sins.  I lie under the imputation which says, ’Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord:  though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’  On this promise I rely.”