Shortly before the noon whistles blew, two little girls came into the alley with the carpenters’ dinner pails.  They made their way timidly through the crowd, casting shy glances to the right and left; at a word from one of the men they placed the dinner pails beside the pile of lumber and hurried away; but at the street corner they paused, and with wide eyes stared up in the direction of North’s window.

A moment later the whistles sounded and the idlers dispersed, while the two mechanics threw down their hammers and took possession of the lumber pile.  After they had eaten, they lighted their pipes and smoked in silent contentment; but before their pipes were finished the crowd began to reassemble, and all that afternoon the shifting changing groups stood about in the alley, watching the building of the fence.  At no time were the two carpenters without an audience.  This continued from day to day until the structure was completed, then for a week there was no work done within the inclosure.  It remained empty and deserted, with its litter of chips, of blocks and of board ends.

On the morning of the first Monday in May, North was standing before his window when the two mechanics entered the yard from the jail; they brought tools, and one carried a roll of blue paper under his arm; this he spread out on a board and both men examined it carefully.  Next they crossed to the lumber pile and looked it over.  They were evidently making some sort of calculation.  Then they pulled on their overalls and went to work, and in one corner of the yard—­the corner opposite North’s window—­they began to build his scaffold.  The thing took shape before his very eyes, a monstrous anachronism.

General Herbert had not been idle while the unhurried preparations for John North’s execution were going forward; whatever his secret feeling was, neither his words nor his manner conceded defeat.  Belknap had tried every expedient known to criminal practice to secure a new trial but had failed, and it was now evident that without the intervention of the governor, North’s doom was fixed unalterably.  Belknap quitted Mount Hope for Columbus, and there followed daily letters and almost hourly telegrams, but General Herbert felt from the first that the lawyer was not sanguine of success.  Then on the eighth of June, two days before the execution, came a long message from the lawyer.  His wife was ill, her recovery was doubtful; the governor was fully possessed of the facts in North’s case and was considering them, would the general come at once to Columbus?

This telegram reached Idle Hour late at night, and the next morning father and daughter were driven into Mount Hope.  The pleasant life with its agreeable ordering which the general had known for ten peaceful years had resolved itself into a mad race with time.  The fearful, the monstrous, seemed to reach out and grip him with skeleton fingers.  Like the pale silent girl at his side, he was knowing the horror of death, and a horror that was beyond death.