Surratt and Booth, however, were busied from that time on in making their preparations. The first step was to enlist in the conspiracy a sufficient number of competent and reliable assistants, to each one of whom was assigned the part he was to take in it, and to train, equip, and prepare him for the part assigned him. The assassination of President Lincoln had fallen to Payne by lot; and to him was entrusted the task of making all needed preparations. Payne had visited Canada during the fall of 1864, and probably there made the acquaintance of Booth. To a man of Booth's sagacity, a mere glance at Payne would be sufficient to impress him with the idea that he was one of the helpers he wanted; and as we find him as early as February, 1865, transplanted to Washington City by Booth and Surratt, and from that time on associating with them very intimately but very secretly, and without employment, or visible means, passing back and forth between Washington and Baltimore, and finally provided with quarters in Washington by Surratt, there can be no doubt that he was early enlisted in the conspiracy, and supported by the Canada Cabinet through their agents in Washington--Booth and Surratt. The author is led to conclude from studying the evidence that Booth and Surratt were acting under a considerable latitude of provisional instructions, and that to them was entrusted the selection of the time and place for the accomplishment of their purpose. There were a number of persons in Canada, members of the conspiracy, who were expected to take an active part in its execution; and it is altogether probable that the original plan contemplated the accomplishment of these assassinations as opportunities could be found or made, and that for each one a man had been assigned. John Wilkes Booth and John Harrison Surratt were the leaders of the conspiracy in Washington, they having proposed to their co-conspirators in Canada to accomplish for them the assassinations they had planned. They were stimulated by their intense hostility to the administration of President Lincoln and desire for the establishment of the Southern Confederacy, and also by the delusive idea of winning enduring fame and the lasting gratitude of their countrymen of the South for being thus the instruments of retrieving the fortunes of their dying cause. But in addition to these considerations, they had large promises of pecuniary reward. They were, in fact, the hired assassins of Jefferson Davis and his Canada Cabinet.