“You are right about that, and we must soon put him out of the way.  To-night will be his last night on earth,” replied the postmaster.

“Do you remember our bargain that we made about that nigger when he came about here?” asked Dr. Zackland.

“No,” answered the postmaster.

“Well, I do.  I have been all along itching for a chance to carry it out.  You were to give me the nigger’s body for dissecting purposes, in return for which I was to give you a keg of my best whiskey,” said Dr. Zackland.

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed the postmaster, “I do remember it now.”

“Well, I’ll certainly stick up to my part of the program if you will stick to yours.”

“You can bet on me,” returned Dr. Zackland.  “I have a suggestion to make about the taking off of the nigger.  Don’t have any burning or riddling with bullets.  Just hang him and fire one shot in the back of his head.  I want him whole in the interest of society.  That whiskey will be the finest that you will ever have and I want a good bargain for it.”

“I’ll follow your instructions to the letter,” answered the postmaster.  “I’ll just tell the boys that he, being a kind of decent nigger, we will give him a decent hanging.  Meantime, Doctor, I must get out.  To-day is Sunday and we must do our work to-morrow night.  I must get a meeting of the boys to-night.”  So saying, the two arose, left the house and parted, one going to gather up his gang and the other to search up and examine his dissecting appliances.

Monday night about 9 o’clock a mob came and took Belton out into the neighboring woods.  He was given five minutes to pray, at the expiration of which time he was to be hanged.  Belton seemed to have foreseen the coming of the mob, but felt somehow that God was at work to deliver him.  Therefore he made no resistance, having unshaken faith in God.

The rope was adjusted around his neck and thrown over the limb of a tree and Belton was swinging up.  The postmaster then slipped forward and fired his pistol at the base of his skull and the blood came oozing forth.  He then ordered the men to retire, as he did not care for them to remain to shoot holes in the body, as was their custom.

As soon as they retired, three men sent by Dr. Zackland stole out of hiding and cut Belton’s body down.  Belton was not then dead, for he had only been hanging for seven minutes, and the bullet had not entered the skull but had simply ploughed its way under the skin.  He was, however, unconscious, and to all appearances dead.

The three men bore him to Dr. Zackland’s residence, and entered a rear door.  They laid him on a dissecting table in the rear room, the room in which the doctor performed all surgical operations.

Dr. Zackland came to the table and looked down on Belton with a happy smile.  To have such a robust, well-formed, handsome nigger to dissect and examine he regarded as one of the greatest boons of his medical career.