He looked like a storekeeper, a man of accounts, a cosmopolitan
kidnapper, who knew a good article and had it now. She was so terrified
that she wanted to cry to him, and see if he would not remit that
business method and become more human, and sauce her back.
But no; the longer she watched, the less he looked towards her, though
she knew his smile meant no one else. To hang upon his cord was very
little; to go with him after it was stretched, down the burning grates
of hell, and see him all so cool and busy in her misery, was the gnawing
vulture at her heart.
In vain she tried to throw responsibility for her sins upon a vague,
false parentage and fatherhood, and say that she was bred to robbery and
vice; a something in her heart responded: "No, you had beauty and health
and chaste lovers whom you rejected or tempted, and a mind that was ever
clear and knew right from wrong. Conscience never gave you up, though
drenched in innocent blood. The often-murdered monitor revived and cried
aloud like the striking of a clock, but never was obeyed!"
Thus haunted, deserted, peeped in upon from the hereafter, racked with
vain needs, her outlets closed to every escape or subterfuge, revenge
itself dead, and disease assisting conscience to banish sleep, the
wretched woman crawled to her window one day and saw the helpless
effigy of her sex exposed there for doing an act of humanity; and
instantly an instinct she immediately obeyed exacted from her one last
familiar, heartless deed, to show the crowd that even she, Patty Cannon
the murderess, had "no respect for a nigger.
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