It seemed hard enough to go to Congress; but to be hanged--this was too sad, too dreadful.

The woman seemed surprised at my grief.

I told her the thoughts that were in my mind.

Then she comforted me.
"Why, man," she said, "hold up your head--you have nothing to grieve about.

Listen.
-- [In this paragraph the fortune-teller details the exact history of the Pike-Brown assassination case in New Hampshire, from the succoring and saving of the stranger Pike by the Browns, to the subsequent hanging and coffining of that treacherous miscreant.