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Surratt's house in Washington. He was one of three Kentucky brothers, all outlaws, and had himself, it is believed, accompanied one of his brothers, who is known to have been at St. Albans on the day of the bank-delivery. This Payne, besides being positively identified as the assassin of the Sewards, had no friends nor haunts in Washington.
The solemnity of this portion of the scene may be imagined, the several clergyman speaking in order the dying testament of their clients, and making the hot hours fresh with the soft harmonies of their benedictions. The two holy fathers having received Mrs. Surratt's confession, after the custom of their creed observed silence. In this, as in other respects, Mrs.
Fearing that the lack of it would arouse suspicion, he abandoned his horse, instead of making good his escape, and hid himself in the woods east of Washington for two days. Driven at last by hunger, he returned to the city and presented himself at Mrs. Surratt's house at the very moment when all its inmates had been arrested and were about to be taken to the office of the provost-marshal.
He gave his advisers several commissions of a private character, and stated that he was willing to meet his God, asking all men to forgive, and forgiving all who had done aught against him. Colonel Doster, his counsel, also took leave of him during the morning, as well as with Atzerott. Mrs. Surratt's daughter was with her at an early hour.
Surratt's face a stealthiness creeps a sort of furtive, feline flashing of the eye, like that of one which means to leap sideways. At these times her face seems to grow hard and colorless, as if that tiger expression which Pradier caught upon the face of Brinvilliers and fastened into a masque, had been repeated here.
"How fortunate, girls," she said, "that these officers are here; this man might have murdered us all." Her effrontery stamps her as worthy of companionship with Booth. Payne has been identified by a lodger of Mrs. Surratt's, as having twice visited the house under the name of Wood. The girls will render valuable testimony in the trial. If John Surratt were in custody the links would be complete.
By the providence which always attends murder, he reached Mrs. Surratt's door just as the officers of the government were arresting her. They seized Payne at once, who had an awkward lie to urge in his defense that he had come there to dig a trench. That night he dug a trench deep and broad enough for both of them to lie in forever.
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.
To-night there is crape on the door of the Surratt's, and a lonely lamp shines at a single window, where the sad orphan is thinking of her bereavement. The bodies of the dead have been applied for but at present will not given up. Judge Holt was petitioned all last night for the lives and liberties of the condemned, but he was inexorable.
Surratt's last hours were entirely modest and womanly. The stage was still filled with people; the crisis of the occasion had come; the chairs were all withdrawn, and the condemned stood upon their feet. The process of tying the limbs began. It was with a shudder, almost a blush, that I saw an officer gather the ropes tightly three times about the robes of Mrs.
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