THE STEADFAST HEART
Further along there was a bit of choice phrasing and of poetic sentiment about—
“That dirty little coward
Who shot down Major Howard.
And they laid Jesse James in his grave.”
Angus arose and went into the house, where the vague light of the dusty lantern seemed to offer greater security from the menace of evening shadows. His eyes were extraordinarily bright and staring, and he shivered with terror at the image of Mr. James and his exploits conjured up. Mr. James was very actual to him, in spite of the death of that gentleman reported in the ballad. Angus looked back over his shoulder at the gathering night fearsomely, and then crept into a corner where he crouched, watching his mother with furtive, hunted eyes…. Mrs. Burke continued to sing.
She, like many another of her class, was obsessed by a morbid passion for criminals and for their professional activities. She rather specialized and was a connoisseur in grotesque crime, and was a sort of encyclopedic authority upon the gruesome details of every outstanding murder of the past decade, its perpetrators, their conversations following apprehension, but more especially their last words upon the scaffold. Last words upon the scaffold, when the noose was
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