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.

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omad nd. the house, the lane was crossed by a second e and
Th. farm-house lane, passing the houw front, kept straight on to the barn,
though a-second carriage track ran up to the porch
It was a homely and primitive scene enough, pastoral as any farm boy's
birth-place, and had been the seat of many toils and endearment Young
wives had been brought to it, and around its hearth the earliest cries of
infants, gladdening mothers' hearts, had made the household jubilant till
the stars came out, and were its only sentries, save the bright ligt'q - its
window-panes as of a camp-fire, and the suppressed chorusses (f the
domestic bivouac within, where apple toasting and nut cracking and coun try games shortened the winter shadows. Yet in this house, so peaceful by
moonlight, murder had washed its spotted hands, and ministered to its
satiated appetite. History —present in every nook in the broad young
world-had stopped to make a landmark of Garrett's farm.
In the dead stillness, Baker dismounted and forced the outer gate;
Conger kept close behind him, and the horsemen followed cautiously. They
made no noise in the soft clay, nor broke the all-foreboding silence any where, till the second gate swung open gratingly, yet even then nor hoarse
nor shrill response came back, save distant croaking, as of frogs or owls,
or the whizz of some passing night-hawk. So they surrounded the pleas
ant old homestead, each horseman, carbine in poise, adjusted under the
grove of locusts, so as to inclose the dwelling with a circle of fire. After
a pause, Baker rode to the kitchen door on the side, and dismounting, rap
ped and halloed lustily. An ola man, in drawers and night-shirt, hastily
indrew the bolts, and stood on the threshold, peering shiveringly into the
darkness.
Baker seized him by the throat at once, and held -a pistol to his ear.
Who-who is it that calls me?" cried the old man. "Where are the
men who stay with you?" challenged Baker. "If you prevaricate you are
a dead man!" The old fellow, who proved to be the head of the family,
was so overawed and paralysed that he stammered, and shook, and said
nota. word. "Go light a candle," cried Baker, sternly, "and be quick
about it." The trembling old man obeyed, and in a moment the imperfect rvs flared upon his whitening hairs and bluishly pallid face. Then
the question was repeated, backed up by the glimmering pistol, "where
are those men?" The old man held to the wall, and his knees smote each
other. "They are gone," he said. "We hav'n't got them in the house.
I assure you that they are gone." Here there were sounds and whisp.ings in the main building adjoining, and the lieutenant strode to the door.
A ludicrous instant intervened, the old man's modesty outran his terrar.
"Don't go in there," he said, feebly;'-there are women undressed in
there."' Damn the women," cried Baker; "what.if they are undressed?
We shall go in if they haven't a'rag." Leaving the old man in -mute
astonishment, Baker bolted through the door, and stood in an assemblage
of bare arms and night robes. His loaded pistol disarmed modesty of its
delicacy and substituted therefor a seasonable terror. Here he repeated
his summons, and the half light of the candle gave to his face a more than
bandit ferocity. They all denied knowledge of the strangers' whereabouts.
In the interim Conger had also entered, and while the household and its
invaders were thus in weird tableaux, a young man appeared, as if he had
risen from the ground. The muzzles of everybody turned upon him in a
second; but, while he blanched, he did not lose loquacity "Father,"'
said, "we had better tell the truth about the matter. Those men whom
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