, and to take pleasure in the exercise of their most grim
calling. If this be true, then surely Uncle Tobe was to all outward
appearances an exception to the rule. Never by word or look or act was
he caught gloating over his victims; always he exhibited a merciful
swiftness in the dread preliminaries and in the act of execution itself.
At the outset he had shown deftness. With frequent practise he grew
defter still. He contrived various devices for expediting the
proceeding. For instance, after prolonged experiments, conducted in
privacy, he evolved a harnesslike arrangement of leather belts and
straps, made all in one piece, and fitted with buckles and snaffles.
With this, in a marvellously brief space, he could bind his man at
elbows and wrists, at knees and ankles, so that in less time almost than
it would take to describe the process, the latter stood upon the trap,
as a shape deprived of motion, fully caparisoned for the end. He fitted
the inner side of the crosspiece of the gallows with pegs upon which the
rope rested, entirely out of sight of him upon whom it was presently to
be used, until the moment when Uncle Tobe, stretching a long arm upward,
brought it down, all reeved and ready. He hit upon the expedient of
slickening the noose parts with yellow bar soap so that it would run
smoothly in the loop and tighten smartly, without undue tugging. He
might have used grease or lard, but soap was tidier, and Uncle Tobe, as
has been set forth, was a tidy man.

After the first few hangings his system began to follow a regular
routine. From somewhere to the west or southwest of Chickaloosa the
deputy marshals would bring in a man consigned to die. The prison
people, taking their charge over from them, would house him in a cell of
a row of cells made doubly tight and doubly strong for such as he; in
due season the warden would notify Uncle Tobe of the date fixed for the
inflicting of the penalty. Four or five days preceding the day, Uncle
Tobe would pay a visit to the prison, timing his arrival so that he
reached there just before the exercise hour for the inmates of a certain
cell-tier. Being admitted, he would climb sundry flights of narrow iron
stairs and pause just outside a crisscrossed door of iron slats while a
turnkey, entering that door and locking it behind him, would open a
smaller door set flat in the wall of damp-looking grey stones and invite
the man caged up inside to come forth for his daily walk. Then, wh