The life, crime, and capture of John Wilkes Booth,: with a full sketch of the conspiracy of which he was the leader, and the pursuit, trial and execution of his accomplices./ By George Alfred Townsend.

28'M Life, Cbir, and Capture of JoAs W'slke,#B..
LETTER IV.
THE A hSSAUB8 DOATK.
WASHIOTOW, April 8. M
A hard and grizzly face overlooks me as I write. Its inconsiderable
forehead is crowned with turnirg sandy hair, and the deep concave of it.
long insatiate jaws is almost hidden by a dense red beard, which can
not still abate the terrible decsion of the large mouth, so well sustained
by searching eyes of spotted gray, which roll and rivet one. This is the
face of Lafayette Baker coonael and chief of the secret service. He has
played the niost perilous parts of the war, and is the capturer of the late
President's murderer. The story that I am to tell you, as he and his
trusty dependents told it to me, will be aptly commenced here, where the
net was woven wnieh took the dying life of Wilkes Booth.
When the murder occured, Colonel Baker was absent from Washing.
ton. IIe returned on the third morning, and was at once besought by Se.
retary Stanton to join the hue and cry against the escaped Booth. The
sagacious detective found that nearly ten thousand cavalry, and one-fourth
as many policemen, had been meantime scouring without plan or compass,
the whole territory of Southern Maryland. They were treading on each
other's heels, and mixing up the thing so. conifoundedly, that the best
place for the culprits to have gone would have been in the very midst of
their pursuers. Baker at once possessed himself of the little the War
Department had learned, and started immediately to take the usual deteotive measures, till then neglected, of offering a reward and getting out
photographs of the suspected ones. He then dispatched a few chosen
detectives to certain vital points, and awaited results.
The first of these was the capture of Atzeroth. Others, like the taking
of Dr. Mudge, simultaneously occured. But the district supeeted being
remote from the railway routes, and broken by no telegraph station, tlhe
colonel, to place himselfnearer the theater of events, Ordered an opera tor, with the necessary instrument, to tap the wire running to Point
Lookout, near Chappells Point, aild send him prompt messsages..
iche same steamer which took down the operator and two detectivLs
brought back one of the same detectives and a negro. This negro, taken
to Colonel Baker's office, stated so positively that he had seen Booth and
another man cross the Potomac inii a fishing boat, while he was looking down
upon them from a bank, that the colonel. was at first skeptical; but when
examined the negro answered so readily and intelligently, recognizing the
men from the photographs, that Baker knew at last thathe had the true scent.
Straightway he sent to General Hancock for twenty-five men, and while
tne order was going, drew down his coast survey-maps. With that quick
detective intuition amounting almost to inspiration, Se cast upon the pro.
bable route and destination of the refugees, as well as the point where he
would soonest strike. them. Booth, he knew, would not keep along the
coast, with frequent deep rivers to cross, nor, indeed, in any direction
east of Richmond, where he was liable at any time to cross our lines of
occupation; nor, being lame, could he ride on- horseback, so as to place
himself very far westward of his point of debarkation in Virginia. But he
would travel in a direct course from Bluff point, where he crossed to East emrn Tennessee, and this would take him through Port Royal on the Rap pahannock river, in time to be intercepted there by the outgbing cavalry men.