“My son, let the things of this earth go, and turn your attention toward those of heaven.”

Delaney paid no attention to this admonition.  The whole six then began delivering farewell messages to those in the crowd.  Key pulled a watch from his pocket and said: 

“Two minutes more to talk.”

Delaney said cheerfully: 

“Well, good by, b’ys; if I’ve hurted any of y ez, I hope ye’ll forgive me.  Shpake up, now, 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 parallel lines, through which all the prisoners passed and took a look at the bodies.  Pete Donnelly and Dick Allen knelt down and wiped the froth off Delaney’s lips, and swore vengeance against those who had done him to death.