Besides the officers that were always in the chamber, six sentinels kept watch by night and by day, over every aperture of the building; if hope of escape ever rose in Andre's breast it could not have developed into even the vaguest expectation. To the idea of suicide as a means of avoiding his doom, he never descended. The noon of this day was appointed for the execution, and at half an hour before, the cortege set forth. Andre walked arm in arm between two subalterns; each, it is said, with a drawn sword in the opposite hand A captain's command of thirty or forty men, marched immediately about these, while an outer guard of five hundred infantry, environed the whole and formed a hollow square around the gibbet, within which no one save the officers on duty, and the Provost- Marshal's men, were suffered to enter. An immense multitude was, however, assembled on all sides to witness the spectacle ; and every house along the way was thronged with eager gazers, that only of Washington's excepted. Here the shutters were drawn and no man was visible but the two sentries who paced to an fro before the door. Neither the chief himself, nor his staff, were present with the troops; a circumstance which was declared by our people, and assented to by Andre, as evincing a laudable decorum. But almost every field-officer in our army, led by Greene, headed the procession on horseback, and a number followed the prisoner on foot ; while the outer guard, stretching in single file on either side, in front and rear, prevented the concourse from crowding in. In addition to all those who came in