ruth.

"I have, may it please the court, a few words to say:

"In the first place I deny everything but what I have already admitted:
of a design on my part to free slaves. I intended certainly to have made
a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter when I went into
Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either
side, moving them through the country and finally leading them into
Canada. I designed to have done the thing again on a larger scale.
That was all I intended. I never did intend murder or treason, or the
destruction of property, or to excite or to incite slaves to rebellion,
or to make insurrection.

"Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the
furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with
the blood of my children--and with the blood of millions in this slave
country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust
treatment--I say let it be done."

David Cruise was not there to tell of the bullet that crashed through
his heart in Missouri. Frederick Douglas was not there to tell that he
abandoned Brown in the old stone quarry outside Chambersburg, precisely
because he had changed the plan of carrying off slaves as in Missouri to
a scheme of treason, wholesale murders and insurrection.

Cruise was in his grave and Douglas on his way to Europe. There was no
one to contradict his statements. The mob mind never asks for facts. It
asks only for assertions. John Brown gave them what he knew they wished
to hear and believe.

They heard and they believed.

With due solemnity, the Judge pronounced the sentence of death and fixed
the date on December the second, thirty days in the future.

The old man's eyes flamed with hidden fires at the unexpected grant of a
month in which to complete the raising of the Blood Feud so gloriously
begun. He was a master in the coming of mystic phrases in letters. He
gloried in religious symbols. Within thirty days he could work with his
pen the miracle that would transform a nation into the puppets of his
will.

He walked beside the jailer, his eyes glittering, his head uplifted.
The Judge ordered the crowd to keep their seats until the prisoner was
removed. In silence he marched through the throng without a hiss or a
taunt.

CHAPTER XXXIII

The day of the Great Deed was one never to be forgotten by Cook's little
bride. They had been married six months. Each hour had bound the gir