any of yez that I've hurted, and say yell forgive
me."

We called upon Marion Friend, whose throat Delaney had tried to cut three
weeks before while robbing him of forty dollars, to come forward, but
Friend was not in a forgiving mood, and refused with an oath.

Key said:

"Time's up!" put the watch back in his pocket and raised his hand like an
officer commanding a gun. Harris and Payne laid hold of the ropes to the
supports of the planks. Each of the six hangmen tied a condemned man's
hands, pulled a meal sack down over his head, placed the noose around his
neck, drew it up tolerably close, and sprang to the ground. The priest
began praying aloud.

Key dropped his hand. Payne and Harris snatched the supports out with a
single jerk. The planks fell with a clatter. Five of the bodies swung
around dizzily in the air. The sixth that of "Mosby," a large, powerful,
raw-boned man, one of the worst in the lot, and who, among other crimes,
had killed Limber Jim's brother-broke the rope, and fell with a thud to
the ground. Some of the men ran forward, examined the body, and decided
that he still lived. The rope was cut off his neck, the meal sack
removed, and water thrown in his face until consciousness returned.
At the first instant he thought he was in eternity. He gasped out:

"Where am I? Am I in the other world?"

Limber Jim muttered that they would soon show him where he was, and went
on grimly fixing up the scaffold anew. "Mosby" soon realized what had
happened, and the unrelenting purpose of the Regulator Chiefs. Then he
began to beg piteously for his life, saying:

"O for God's sake, do not put me up there again! God has spared my life
once. He meant that you should be merciful to me."

Limber Jim deigned him no reply. When the scaffold was rearranged, and a
stout rope had replaced the broken one, he pulled the meal sack once more
over "Mosby's" head, who never ceased his pleadings. Then picking up the
large man as if he were a baby, he carried him to the scaffold and handed
him up to Tom Larkin, who fitted the noose around his neck and sprang
down. The supports had not been set with the same delicacy as at first,
and Limber Jim had to set his heel and wrench desperately at them before
he could force them out. Then "Mosby" passed away without a struggle.

After hanging till life was extinct, the bodies were cut down, the
meal-sacks pulled off their faces, and the Regulators formal two parall