"
That doctrine long survived her, though she found it old when she came
among them.
She aimed an egg at the breast of her sex, and, with a barefaced grin,
she saw it strike and burst. The next moment the crowd had recognized
and defied her.
In the exasperation of their shout, and of being no longer praised even
for insulting a negro, a convulsion of desperate rage overcame the
murderess.
Too helpless to retort in any other way, yet in uncontrollable
recklessness, she exclaimed, "They never shall see me hang, then!" and
swallowed the arsenic she had concealed in her bosom.
That night she died in awful torments.
* * * * *
The venerable Chancellor, lying in the hotel near the whipping-post
corner, watched by the released Mrs. Hudson, who must to-morrow depart
from the state forever, heard that night voices on the square, saying:
"Patty Cannon's dead. They say she's took poison."
A mighty pain seized the Chancellor's heart, and the loud groans he made
called a stranger into the room.
"Is that dreadful woman dead?" sighed the Chancellor.
"Yes; she will never plague Delaware again, marster."
"God be thanked!" the old man groaned. "Justice and murder are kin no
more."
They said he died that instant of heart disease.
CHAPTER XLV.
THE JUDGE REMARRIED.
Vesta found her circle reunited, though with many absentees, at Princess
Anne.
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