"Good Lord! what's that frightful picture?" said Cleary, as Sam opened
the paper. "Oh, I see; it's that lynching yesterday. Why, it's from a
snap-shot; that's what I call enterprise! There's the darkey tied to
the stake, and the flames are just up to his waist. My! how he squirms.
It's fearful, isn't it? And look at the crowd! There are small boys
bringing wood, and women and girls looking on, and, upon my word, a
baby in arms, too! I know that square very well. I've often been there.
That's the First Presbyterian Church there behind the stake. Rather a
handsome building," and Cleary turned back to his own paper, while Sam
settled down in his corner to read how the leading citizens gathered
bones and charred flesh as mementoes and took them home to their
children. No one could have guessed what he was reading from his
expression, for his face spoke of nothing but a guileless conscience
and a contented heart.
One day at St. Kisco gave just time enough for the photographs, and
most of the day was devoted to them. Sam was taken in twenty poses--in
the act of leading his troops in a breach, giving the order to fire,
charging bayonets himself with a musket supposed to have been taken
from a dead foe, standing with his arms folded and his cap pulled over
his eyes in the trenches, and waving his cap on a bastion in the moment
of triumph. Cleary lay down so that his friend might be pictured with
his foot upon his prostrate form.
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