The muffled crack of a pistol in the President's box hushed the laughter for an instant.
No one realised what had happened, and when the assassin suddenly leaped from the box, with a blood-marked knife flashing in his right hand, caught his foot in the flags and fell to his knees on the stage, many thought it a part of the programme, and a boy, leaning over the gallery rail, giggled. When Booth turned his face of statuesque beauty lit by eyes flashing with insane desperation and cried, "Sic semper tyrannis," they were only confirmed in this impression.
A sudden, piercing scream from Mrs. Lincoln, quivering, soul-harrowing! Leaning far out of the box, from ashen cheeks and lips leaped the piteous cry of appeal, her hand pointing to the retreating figure:
"The President is shot! He has killed the President!"
Every heart stood still for one awful moment. The brain refused to record the message—and then the storm burst!
A wild roar of helpless fury and despair! Men hurled themselves over the footlights in vain pursuit of the assassin. Already the clatter of his horse's feet could be heard in the distance. A surgeon threw himself against the door of the box, but it had been barred within by the cunning hand. Another leaped on the stage, and the people lifted him up in their arms and over the fatal railing.
Women began to faint, and strong men trampled down the weak in mad rushes from side to side.
The stage in a moment was a seething mass of crazed
