the precious burdens.

As Phil pressed forward with Margaret and Elsie through the open door came
the roar of the mob without, shouting its cries:

"The President is shot!"

"Seward is murdered!"

"Where is Grant?"

"Where is Stanton?"

"To arms! To arms!"

The peal of signal guns could now be heard, the roll of drums and the
hurried tramp of soldiers' feet. They marched none too soon. The mob had
attacked the stockade holding ten thousand unarmed Confederate prisoners.

At the corner of the block in which the theatre stood they seized a man
who looked like a Southerner and hung him to the lamp-post. Two heroic
policemen fought their way to his side and rescued him.

If the temper of the people during the war had been convulsive, now it was
insane--with one mad impulse and one thought--vengeance! Horror, anger,
terror, uncertainty, each passion fanned the one animal instinct into
fury.

Through this awful night, with the lights still gleaming as if to mock the
celebration of victory, the crowds swayed in impotent rage through the
streets, while the telegraph bore on the wings of lightning the
awe-inspiring news. Men caught it from the wires, and stood in silent
groups weeping, and their wrath against the fallen South began to rise as
the moaning of the sea under a coming storm.

At dawn black clouds hung threatening on the eastern horizon. As the sun
rose, tingeing them for a moment with scarlet and purple glory, Abraham
Lincoln breathed his last.

Even grim Stanton, the iron-hearted, stood by his bedside and through
blinding tears exclaimed:

"Now he belongs to the ages!"

The deed was done. The wheel of things had moved. Vice-President Johnson
took the oath of office, and men hailed him Chief; but the seat of Empire
had moved from the White House to a little dark house on the Capitol hill,
where dwelt an old club-footed man, alone, attended by a strange brown
woman of sinister animal beauty and the restless eyes of a leopardess.

CHAPTER VII

THE FRENZY OF A NATION

Phil hurried through the excited crowds with Margaret and Elsie, left them
at the hospital door, and ran to the War Department to report for duty.
Already the tramp of regiments echoed down every great avenue.

Even as he ran, his heart beat with a strange new stroke when he recalled
the look of appeal in Margaret's dark eyes as she nestled close to his
side and clung to his arm for protection. He remembered with a smile the