Susannah, of what had happened.  Miss Susannah spread the alarm, and called some of the slaves to her assistance.  She went to the barn and found her mother and sister-in-law lying in a state of insensibility, and her brother William dead.  With the assistance of old Aunt Hannah and several of the female servants, the two ladies were somewhat restored to consciousness; and William was carried into the house by the servants.  The Doctor himself was away from home attending one of his patients, who was very sick.  When Mrs. Tillotson had somewhat recovered, she sent for Mary and enquired as to how William came by his death in the barn.  Mary told the whole story as previously related in the presence of about sixty or seventy of the neighbours, who had collected together on hearing of the murder.  Of course Mary’s story met with no credit from her mistress, and poor Mary stood in the eyes of all as an accomplice in the conspiracy to murder young Tillotson.  When the doctor arrived it was dark, and after seeing the corpse and hearing from his wife the story that she had made up for him, he called for Mary, but she was nowhere to be found.  The house and plantation were searched in all directions, but no Mary was discovered.  At last, when they had all given over looking for her, towards midnight, a cart drove up to the door.  Doctor, said the driver, I have a dead negro here, and I’m told she belongs to you.  The Doctor came out with a lantern, and as I stood by my master’s carriage, waiting for him to come out and go home, the Doctor ordered me to mount the cart and look at the corpse; I did so, and looked full in that face by the light of the lantern, and saw and knew, notwithstanding the horrible change that had been effected by the work of death, upon those once beautiful features, it was Mary.  Poor Mary, driven to distraction by what had happened, she had sought salvation in the depths of the Chesapeake Bay that night.  Next day the neighbourhood was searched throughout, and the country was placarded for Dan; and Doctor Tillotson and Mr. Burmey, young William’s father-in-law, offered one thousand dollars for him alive, and five hundred for him dead; and although every blackleg in the neighbourhood was on the alert, it was full two months before he was captured.  At length poor Dan was caught and brought by the captors to Mr. Burmey’s, where he was tried principally by Burmey’s two sons, Peter and John, and that night was kept in irons in Burmey’s cellar.  The next day Dan was led into the field in the presence of about three thousand of us.  A staple was driven into the stump of a tree, with a chain attached to it, and one of his handcuffs was taken off and brought through the chain, and then fastened on his hand again.  A pile of pine wood was built around him.  At eight o’clock the wood was set on fire, and when the flames blazed round upon the wretched man, he began to scream and struggle in a most awful manner.  Many of our women fainted, but not one of us was allowed to leave until the body of poor Dan was consumed.  The unearthly sounds that came from the blazing pile, as poor Dan writhed in the agonies of death, it is beyond the power of my pen to describe.  After a while all was silent, except the cracking of the pine wood as the fire gradually devoured it with the prize that it contained.  Poor Dan had ceased to struggle—­he was at rest.