ic moaning ceased, a look of unspeakable
peace came upon his worn features, and at twenty-two minutes after seven
he died. Stanton broke the silence by saying:

"Now he belongs to the ages."

Booth had done his work efficiently. His principal subordinate, Payne,
had acted with equal audacity and cruelty, but not with equally fatal
result. Going to the home of the Secretary of State, who lay ill in bed,
he had forced his way to Mr. Seward's room, on the pretext of being a
messenger from the physician with a packet of medicine to deliver. The
servant at the door tried to prevent him from going up-stairs; the
Secretary's son, Frederick W. Seward, hearing the noise, stepped out
into the hall to check the intruders. Payne rushed upon him with a
pistol which missed fire, then rained blows with it upon his head, and,
grappling and struggling, the two came to the Secretary's room and fell
together through the door. Frederick Seward soon became unconscious, and
remained so for several weeks, being, perhaps, the last man in the
civilized world to learn the strange story of the night. The Secretary's
daughter and a soldier nurse were in the room. Payne struck them right
and left, wounding the nurse with his knife, and then, rushing to the
bed, began striking at the throat of the crippled statesman, inflicting
three terrible wounds on his neck and cheek. The nurse recovered himself
and seized the assassin from behind, while another son, roused by his
sister's screams, came into the room and managed at last to force him
outside the door--not, however, until he and the nurse had been stabbed
repeatedly. Payne broke away at last, and ran down-stairs, seriously
wounding an attendant on the way, reached the door unhurt, sprang upon
his horse, and rode leisurely away. When surgical aid arrived, the
Secretary's house looked like a field hospital. Five of its inmates were
bleeding from ghastly wounds, and two of them, among the highest
officials of the nation, it was thought might never see the light of
another day; though all providentially recovered.

The assassin left behind him his hat, which apparently trivial loss cost
him and one of his fellow conspirators their lives. Fearing that the
lack of it would arouse suspicion, he abandoned his horse, instead of
making good his escape, and hid himself in the woods east of Washington
for two days. Driven at last by hunger, he returned to the city and
presented himself at Mrs. Surratt's hou