John H. Surratt, as was shown by the evidence on the trial, was in Washington on the 14th day of April, 1865, performing his part in the great crime. He was there aiding and abetting Booth, and co-ordinating the agencies employed in the execution of the plot, in order that all of the assassinations embraced in it might be simultaneously accomplished. Acting first as a counsellor and then as monitor, passing rapidly up and down the street to keep himself in communication with the fiends who were to do the work; calling the time loud enough to be heard at some distance; then going up the street to ascertain whether his warning could be heard by Payne, and the last time with a face deadly pale and manifesting a degree of nervous excitement, inseparable from the commission of such a crime, he called the fatal hour, "Ten minutes past ten!" and vanished from sight. He has gone, but he has left an image imprinted on the mind and memory of Sergeant Dye that can never be effaced. He now becomes a fugitive in disguise, and hies away to Canada to join the hellish clan that first conceived and then led him into his crime. Here he was at once taken in charge by sympathising friends, who kept him hidden away for five months and then, under a disguise and an _alias_, sent him across the Atlantic, and finally to Italy. Here he is found in the Pope's army, and being charged with his crime, which he has already confessed in words as well as by flight, is arrested, escapes from his guards, flies to Naples and thence to Egypt, is met and arrested at Alexandria, and brought back to the scene of his crime, and is now put upon his trial. When asked if he is ready, he replies through his counsel, "I am ready, and have been from the first." Why, then, did he leave the city of his home, his mother and sister and all of his youthful associations, in the early morning of the 15th of April, 1865? Why did he fly to Canada disguised as an English tourist? Why did he hide in Canada for almost half a year, and then, in disguise, and under an _alias_, flee to Europe? Why did he escape from his guards in Italy at the risk (?) of his life, and flee to Egypt? Why, if innocent, did he flee to the ends of the earth, and never cease his flight until his way was hedged before him and further flight was impossible? Was it because he was innocent and desired an opportunity to prove his innocence to the world? In the presence of all these facts, what a mistake it was to say, "And has been from the first." In how much better taste it would have been to have simply replied, "The prisoner is ready, your honor."