public of the details and result of this night of horrors. Evidently conspirators are among us. To what extent does the conspiracy exist? This is a terrible question. When a spirit so horrible as this is abroad, what man is safe? We can only advise the utmost vigilance and the most prompt measures by the authorities. We can only pray God to shield us, His unworthy people, from further calamities like these."

The civil and military authorities prepared for attack from within and without. Martial law was at once established. The long roll was beaten; every exit from the city was guarded; out-going trains were stopped; mounted police and cavalry clattered up and down the street; the forts were ordered on the alert; guns were manned.

In the meantime there had gathered in the house on Tenth Street, where the President lay, his family physician and intimate friends, as well as many prominent officials. Before they reached him it was known there was no hope, that the wound was fatal. They grouped themselves about the bedside or in the adjoining rooms, trying to comfort the weeping wife, or listening awe-struck to the steady moaning and labored breathing of the unconscious man, which at times could be heard all over the house. Stanton alone seemed able to act methodically. No man felt the tragedy more than the great War Secretary, for no one in the cabinet was by greatness of heart and intellect so well able to comprehend the worth of the dying President; but no man in that distracted night acted with greater energy or calm. Summoning the Assistant Secretary, C. A. Dana, and a stenographer, he began dictating orders to the authorities on all sides, notifying them of the tragedy, directing them what precautions to take, what persons to arrest. Grant, now returning to Washington, he directed should be warned to keep close watch on all persons who came close to him in the cars and to see that an engine be sent in front of his train. He sent out, too, an official account of the assassination. To-day

the best brief account of the night's awful work remains the one which Secretary Stanton dictated within sound of the moaning of the dying President.

And so the hours passed without perceptible change in the President's condition, and with only slight shifting of the scene around him. The testimony of those who had witnessed the murder began to be taken in an adjoining room. Occasionally the figures at the bedside changed. Mrs. Lincoln came in at intervals, sobbing out her grief, and then was led away. This man went, another took his place. It was not until daylight that there came a perceptible change. Then the breathing grew quieter, the face became more calm. The doctors at Lincoln's side knew that dissolution was near. Their bulletin of six o'clock read, "Pulse failing;" that of half-past six," Still failing;" that of seven, "Symptoms of immediate dissolution," and then at twenty-two minutes past seven, in the presence of his son Robert, Secretaries Stanton, Welles and Usher, Attorney-General Speed, Senator Sumner, Private Secretary Hay, Dr. Gurley, his pastor, and several physicians and friends, Abraham Lincoln died. There was a prayer, and then the solemn voice of Stanton broke the stillness, "Now he belongs to the ages."

Two hours later the body of the President, wrapped in an American flag, was borne from the house in Tenth Street, and carried through the hushed streets, where already thousands of flags were at half-mast and the gay buntings and garlands had been replaced by black draperies, and where the men who for days had been cheering in excess of joy and relief now stood with uncovered heads and wet eyes. They carried him to an upper room in the private apartments of the White House, and there he lay until three days later a heartbroken people claimed their right to look for a last time on his face.

CHAPTER XXXI

LINCOLN'S FUNERAL

THE first edition of the morning papers in all the cities and towns of the North told their readers on Saturday, April 15, 1865, that Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, lay mortally wounded in Washington. The extras within the next two hours told them he was dead. The first impulse of men everywhere seems to have been to doubt. It could not be. They realized only too quickly that it was true! There was no discrediting the circumstantial accounts of the later telegrams. There was no escape from the horror and uncertainty which filled the air, driving out the joy and exultation which for days had inundated the country.

In the great cities like New York a death-like silence followed the spreading of the news-a silence made the more terrible by the presence of hundreds of men and women walking in the streets with bent heads, white faces, and knit brows. Automatically, without thought of what their neighbors were doing, these men went to their shops only to send away their clerks and close their doors for the day. Stock exchanges met only to adjourn. By ten o'clock business had ceased. It was not only in the cities, where the tension of feeling is always greatest, that this was true. It was the same in the small towns.

"I was a compositor then, working in a printing office at Danville, Illinois," says Prof. A. G. Draper, of Washington, D. C. "The editor came into the room early in the forenoon with a telegram in his hand; he was regarding it