It is true the people showed no disposition to betray him; but, at the same time, they manifested a disposition to enter into no compromising friendship with him, or in any way to assume any responsibility in his behalf by helping him to escape. How much of this was due to abhorrence of his crime, and how much to a dread of consequences, can only be a matter of conjecture. The fact that they were willing to let him escape, if he could, would throw the preponderance on the latter as the governing motive of their conduct. Sad, indeed, was Booth's condition at this time. More than a week had elapsed since he had perpetrated his great crime and commenced his guilty flight; and now he found himself on foot, so lame as scarcely to be able to walk a step, even with the help of a crutch, and scarcely more than fifty miles from his starting point. His companion in crime, Herold, was now the only human being on whose friendship and fidelity he could certainly rely. A reward of one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars offered for his capture, the brand of Cain upon him, his fractured bone cutting into the flesh at every movement of his limb,--a constant admonition of a frowning Providence,--it is no wonder that the diurnal entries in his book begin to bear evidence of a remorse that can never be appeased. We can but pity his deplorable condition, for he was a fellow-man; but then he was at the same time a monster in crime, directed by hatred of a fellow-man without just cause, and of wickedness that had brought upon him the blood of one of the greatest and best of men, not only of his own age and country, but of all the ages of the world. When we contemplate his crime, our sympathies refuse to go with him, and our sense of justice finds a grateful feeling of relief in the evidence now clearly pointing to the fact that he is a doomed man. By the aid of his blind follower, Herold, he is able to maintain his concealment, and after a wretched fashion to resume his flight in an old wagon drawn by two miserable horses and driven by a negro. In this state he reaches Port Conway, on the Rappahannock, in King George County, Virginia. Here his driver refuses to take him any further. It is just at this juncture and in this dilemma that they are met by three confederate soldiers, Major Ruggles, Lieutenant Bainbridge, and Captain William Jett, the latter of Moseby's command.