, making
his headquarters at one of the town livery stables. He was a person of
steady habits, with a reputation for sobriety and frugality among his
neighbours. The government, so to speak, jumped at the chance. Without
delay, his offer was accepted. There was no prolonged haggling over
terms, either. He himself fixed the cost of the job at seventy-five
dollars; this figure to include supervision of the erection of the
gallows, testing of the apparatus, and the actual operation itself.

So, on the appointed day, at a certain hour, to wit, a quarter past six
o'clock in the morning, just outside the prison walls, and in the
presence of the proper and ordained number of witnesses, Uncle Tobe,
with a grave, untroubled face, and hands which neither fumbled nor
trembled, tied up the doomed felon and hooded his head in a black-cloth
bag, and fitted a noose about his neck. The drop fell at eighteen
minutes past the hour. Fourteen minutes later, following brief tests of
heart and pulse, the two attending physicians agreed that the half-breed
was quite satisfactorily defunct. They likewise coincided in the
opinion that the hanging had been conducted with neatness, and with
swiftness, and with the least possible amount of physical suffering for
the deceased. One of the doctors went so far as to congratulate Mr.
Dramm upon the tidiness of his handicraft. He told him that in all his
experience he had never seen a hanging pass off more smoothly, and that
for an amateur, Dramm had done splendidly. To this compliment Uncle Tobe
replied, in his quiet and drawling mode of speech, that he had studied
the whole thing out in advance.

"Ef I should keep on with this way of makin' a livin' I don't 'low ever
to let no slip-ups occur," he added with simple directness. There was no
suggestion of the morbid in his voice or manner as he said this, but
instead merely a deep personal satisfaction.

Others present, having been made sick and faint by the shock of seeing a
human being summarily jerked into the hereafter, went away hurriedly
without saying anything at all. But afterward thinking it over when they
were more composed, they decided among themselves that Uncle Tobe had
carried it off with an assurance and a skill which qualified him most
aptly for future undertakings along the same line; that he was a born
hangman, if ever there was one.

This was the common verdict. So, thereafter, by a tacit understanding,
the ex-cattle-buyer became