THE trial was concluded on the twenty-sixth of August, so that the condemned criminal had only about eleven weeks to live. I am unable to say that he faced death well. The wretched man begged abjectly for mercy, and to every one who went within conversing distance he protested his innocence, and daily recited varying explanations of the death of his victims.

There was a "religious" character in the settlement named Nathan Larkins, who professed to have been a local preacher in the old land before emigrating to Canada. He made an effort to "carry the Gospel," as he put it, to the doomed man’s cell. To him the murderer made a profession of conversion. Upon every possible occasion thereafter the old preacher loved to refer to Wasby as a "brand plucked from the burnin’."

The night before the fatal thirteenth of November Nathan spent with the prisoner, and after he had left, in the early morning, the officers entered the cell and prepared the prisoner for the scaffold.

Wasby, it seems, had never quite given up hope of a reprieve. He fancied that his professed conversion might help him. When, however, he realised that there was no chance for him, he broke forth into the wildest fury.

The horrified guards did what they could to quiet him, and spoke as kindly as possible under the circumstances. One of them ventured the remark that, if he were innocent, as he claimed, he need not fear death.

"Innocent, did you say!" shouted the frantic man. "Innocent!" and he laughed hideously. "No, I’m not innocent! I’m only sorry I did not crush the life out of the other brat too! If I had got him into my clutches in the courtroom when I asked to kiss him, I’d have made short work of him."

As he gradually grew calmer, the guards, wishing to induce him to confess, encouraged him to continue.

"Yes," said Wasby, at last, "I had been on a spree. And when I was alone in the bush, choppin’, I got to thinkin’ o’ hell, and the devil himself came to me in the form of a black man and urged me to kill Colin, and my wife, and the other children. I asked him how I would do it. He told me to sharpen some hardwood stakes and dry them in the shanty till the time came. He actually held the stakes for me while I sharpened them, and it was with one of those stakes that I killed the family. The devil in the form of a black man visited me every day and urged me to it, so that at last I resolved to do as he said.

"When I returned from the bush for breakfast that mornin’, my wife had overslept herself and was still in bed. I flew into a rage, and the devil seemed to take possession o’ me. My poor wife was soon done for, and I started in on the children. By the time I finished each child, I grew more sick and shaky, and when Colin’s turn had come I could hardly stand. I don’t know why I didn’t take him first, I’m sure. He looked into my face and begged me not to kill him. Then I was clean stuck. I sat down a minute. When I came to myself, Colin was gone.

"I set the shanty on fire, thinkin’ the bodies would be burned, and there would be no evidence agin me. Then I hurried towards the bush, so nobody passin’ could see me. By and by I came back and the shanty was pretty well burned, but the bodies didn’t burn. So I threw them into the cellar. But first, I drew their hands several times down the charred wall, to make people think they had tried to fight their way out of the place."