"What!" cried he, jovial of voice yet deadly-eyed, "is it my runaway hangman in very sooth.

The Hangman of that Name, but now all his Successors.'

One can forgive even a hangman for doing his duty, however it may thwart one's plans.

The Hangmen of Sleepy Valley.

The eye of this wolf is as quick in his head as a cutpurse's in a throng, and as nimble is he at his business as an hangman at an execution.

First the royal officers, twenty-three in number, were ranged in two files, and ordered to walk forward manacled and bareheaded; next came the hangman with his bonnet on his head, dressed in the livery of his office, and mounted on his horse that drew a vehicle of new form devised for the occasion; and then on this vehicle was seen Montrose himself, seated on a lofty form, and pinioned, and uncovered.

Talk about chaps with the noose round their necks and the hangman about to let her go and somebody galloping up on a foaming horse, waving the reprievenot in it.

The courts took the occasion to lessen the work of the hangman by sentencing convicts to deportation in servitude; the government rid itself of political prisoners during the civil war by the same method; and when servant prices rose the supply was further swelled by the agency of professional kidnappers.