midnights
`` The hunted man one morning heard A whistle near and strong , And in the night a fiery light The thickets flashed among : The demon of the engine rushed Along on blazing beams -- The hound the murderer had flushed , The outlaw 's path was Steam 's ! '' * * * * * The cry of hate from the crowd around the whipping-post , as it awoke Patty Cannon 's last anger , also determined her last crime . Fear was relative in her : she had neither the fear of men nor of shame , and only of death as it involved a hereafter . Whether that hereafter was a latent conviction in her mind , or the vivid admonition of guilt and dead men 's eyes peering over her dreams and into the silent , lonely watches of haunted midnights , who shall tell ? There is no analysis of a native and ancient depravity : it was sown in the marrow , it strengthens in the bone , and , with a cunning , daring self-assertion , gambles upon the faith of living and of dying not . Its very fears push it onward in crime , and make it cruelly tantalize its own fate , as cowards lean over graveyard walls , and shout , with an inner trembling , `` Come forth -- I dare you ! '' So had this woman , conscious of her deserts , bullied eternal justice through its long postponements , never doubting , while ever vexing , the Spirit of God , until the number of her crimes crowded the tablet of her memory , and out of the hideous gulf of her past life gazed faces without names and deeds without memoranda ; a procession the longer that strangers were in it , and , shrinking from her , yet pressing on , exclaimed her name or only shrieked '' 'T is she ! ''