The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. Thomas Dixon

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 men, among them the actors and actresses in costumes and painted faces, their mortal terror shining through the rouge. They passed water up to the box, and some tried to climb up and enter it.

      The two hundred soldiers of the President’s guard suddenly burst in, and, amid screams and groans of the weak and injured, stormed the house with fixed bayonets, cursing, yelling, and shouting at the top of their voices:

      “Clear out! Clear out! You sons of hell!”

      One of them suddenly bore down with fixed bayonet toward Phil.

      Margaret shrank in terror close to his side and tremblingly held his arm.

      Elsie sprang forward, her face aflame, her eyes flashing fire, her little figure tense, erect, and quivering with rage:

      “How dare you, idiot, brute!”

      The soldier, brought to his senses, saw Phil in full captain’s uniform before him, and suddenly drew himself up, saluting. Phil ordered him to guard Margaret and Elsie for a moment, drew his sword, leaped between the crazed soldiers and their victims and stopped their insane rush.

      Within the box the great head lay in the surgeon’s arms, the blood slowly dripping down, and the tiny death bubbles forming on the kindly lips. They carried him tenderly out, and another group bore after him the unconscious wife. The people tore the seats from their fastenings and heaped them in piles to make way for the precious burdens.

      As Phil pressed forward with Margaret and Elsie through the open door came the roar of the mob without, shouting its cries:

      “The President is shot!”

      “Seward is murdered!”

      “Where is Grant?”

      “Where is Stanton?”

      “To arms! To arms!”

      The peal of signal guns could now be heard, the roll of drums and the hurried tramp of soldiers’ feet. They marched none too soon. The mob had attacked the stockade holding ten thousand unarmed Confederate prisoners.

      At the corner of the block in which the theatre stood they seized a man who looked like a Southerner and hung him to the lamp-post. Two heroic policemen fought their way to his side and rescued him.

      If the temper of the people during the war had been convulsive, now it was insane – with one mad impulse and one thought – vengeance! Horror, anger, terror, uncertainty, each passion fanned the one animal instinct into fury.

      Through this awful night, with the lights still gleaming as if to mock the celebration of victory, the crowds swayed in impotent rage through the streets, while the telegraph bore on the wings of lightning the awe-inspiring news. Men caught it from the wires, and stood in silent groups weeping, and their wrath against the fallen South began to rise as the moaning of the sea under a coming storm.

      At dawn black clouds hung threatening on the eastern horizon. As the sun rose, tingeing them for a moment with scarlet and purple glory, Abraham Lincoln breathed his last.

      Even grim Stanton, the iron-hearted, stood by his bedside and through blinding tears exclaimed:

      “Now he belongs to the ages!”

      The deed was done. The wheel of things had moved. Vice-President Johnson took the oath of office, and men hailed him Chief; but the seat of Empire had moved from the White House to a little dark house on the Capitol hill, where dwelt an old club-footed man, alone, attended by a strange brown woman of sinister animal beauty and the restless eyes of a leopardess.

      CHAPTER VII

      The Frenzy of a Nation

      Phil hurried through the excited crowds with Margaret and Elsie, left them at the hospital door, and ran to the War Department to report for duty. Already the tramp of regiments echoed down every great avenue.

      Even as he ran, his heart beat with a strange new stroke when he recalled the look of appeal in Margaret’s dark eyes as she nestled close to his side and clung to his arm for protection. He remembered with a smile the almost resistless impulse of the moment to slip his arm around her and assure her of safety. If he had only dared!

      Elsie begged Mrs. Cameron and Margaret to go home with her until the city was quiet.

      “No,” said the mother. “I am not afraid. Death has no terrors for me any longer. We will not leave Ben a moment now, day or night. My soul is sick with dread for what this awful tragedy will mean for the South! I can’t think of my own safety. Can any one undo this pardon now?” she asked anxiously.

      “I am sure they cannot. The name on that paper should be mightier dead than living.”

      “Ah, but will it be? Do you know Mr. Johnson? Can he control Stanton? He seemed to be more powerful than the President himself. What will that man do now with those who fall into his hands.”

      “He can do nothing with your son, rest assured.”

      “I wish I knew it,” said the mother wistfully.

      A few moments after the President died on Saturday morning, the rain began to pour in torrents. The flags that flew from a thousand gilt-tipped peaks in celebration of victory drooped to half-mast and hung weeping around their staffs. The litter of burnt fireworks, limp and crumbling, strewed the streets, and the tri-coloured lanterns and balloons, hanging pathetically from their wires, began to fall to pieces.

      Never in all the history of man had such a conjunction of events befallen a nation. From the heights of heaven’s rejoicing to be suddenly hurled to the depths of hell in piteous helpless grief! Noon to midnight without a moment between. A pall of voiceless horror spread its shadows over the land. Nothing short of an earthquake or the sound of the archangel’s trumpet could have produced the sense of helpless consternation, the black and speechless despair. The people read their papers in tears. The morning meal was untouched. By no other single feat could death have carried such peculiar horror to every home. Around this giant figure the heartstrings of the people had been unconsciously knit. Even his political enemies had come to love him.

      Above all, in just this moment he was the incarnation of the Triumphant Union on the altar of whose life every house had laid the offering of its first-born. The tragedy was stupefying – it was unthinkable – it was the mockery of Fate!

      Men walked the streets of the cities, dazed with the sense of blind grief. Every note of music and rejoicing became a dirge. All business ceased. Every wheel in every mill stopped. The roar of the great city was hushed, and Greed for a moment forgot his cunning.

      The army only moved with swifter spring, tightening its mighty grip on the throat of the bleeding prostrate South.

      As the day wore on its gloomy hours, and men began to find speech, they spoke to each other at first in low tones of Fate, of Life, of Death, of Immortality, of God – and then as grief found words the measureless rage of baffled strength grew slowly to madness.

      On every breeze from the North came the deep-muttered curses.

      Easter