se at the very moment when all
its inmates had been arrested and were about to be taken to the office
of the provost-marshal. Payne thus fell into the hands of justice, and
the utterance of half a dozen words by him and the unhappy woman whose
shelter he sought proved the death-warrant of them both.

Booth had been recognized by dozens of people as he stood before the
footlights and brandished his dagger; but his swift horse quickly
carried him beyond any haphazard pursuit. He crossed the Navy-Yard
bridge and rode into Maryland, being joined very soon by Herold. The
assassin and his wretched acolyte came at midnight to Mrs. Surratt's
tavern, and afterward pushed on through the moonlight to the house of an
acquaintance of Booth, a surgeon named Mudd, who set Booth's leg and
gave him a room, where he rested until evening, when Mudd sent them on
their desolate way south. After parting with him they went to the
residence of Samuel Cox near Port Tobacco, and were by him given into
the charge of Thomas Jones, a contraband trader between Maryland and
Richmond, a man so devoted to the interests of the Confederacy that
treason and murder seemed every-day incidents to be accepted as natural
and necessary. He kept Booth and Herold in hiding at the peril of his
life for a week, feeding and caring for them in the woods near his
house, watching for an opportunity to ferry them across the Potomac;
doing this while every wood-path was haunted by government detectives,
well knowing that death would promptly follow his detection, and that a
reward was offered for the capture of his helpless charge that would
make a rich man of any one who gave him up.

With such devoted aid Booth might have wandered a long way; but there
is no final escape but suicide for an assassin with a broken leg. At
each painful move the chances of discovery increased. Jones was able,
after repeated failures, to row his fated guests across the Potomac.
Arriving on the Virginia side, they lived the lives of hunted animals
for two or three days longer, finding to their horror that they were
received by the strongest Confederates with more of annoyance than
enthusiasm, though none, indeed, offered to betray them. Booth had by
this time seen the comments of the newspapers on his work, and bitterer
than death or bodily suffering was the blow to his vanity. He confided
his feelings of wrong to his diary, comparing himself favorably with
Brutus and Tell, and complaining: