The Gallows in My Garden

''The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall.
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbors . . . on the wail . . .
Are drawing a long breath to shout 'Hurray!'
The strangest whim has seized me . . . After all
I think I will not hang myself today.''
--From G. K. Chesterton’s A Ballade of Suicide

Young Donald Lawson was familiar with that poem . . . yet now his body hung dead on a crag. Murder or suicide, Man...