WALKING GALLOWS.

(_From Sir Jonah Barrington's Sketches._)


Among the extraordinary characters that turned up in the fatal
"ninety-eight," there were few more extraordinary than Lieutenant H----,
then denominated the "walking gallows;"--and such he certainly was,
literally and practically.

Lieutenant H---- was an officer of the line on half pay. His brother was
one of the solicitors to the Crown--a quiet, tremulous, _vino deditus_
sort of man, and a leading Orangeman;--his widow who afterwards married
and survived a learned doctor, was a clever, positive, good-looking
Englishwoman, and, I think, fixed the doctor's avowed _creed_: as to his
genuine _faith_, that was of little consequence.

Lieutenant H---- was about six feet two inches high;--strong, and broad
in proportion. His strength was great, but of the dead kind
unaccompanied by activity. He could lift a ton, but could not leap a
rivulet; he looked mild, and his address was civil--neither assuming nor
at all ferocious. I knew him well, and from his countenance should never
have suspected him of cruelty; but so cold-blooded and so eccentric an
executioner of the human race I believe never yet existed, save among
the American Indians.[6]

[6] His mode of execution being perfectly novel, and at the same
time _ingenious_, Curran said, "The lieutenant should have got a
patent for cheap strangulation."