A moment's hush, incredulous--a scream--the cry of murder--Mrs. Lincoln leaning out of the box, with ashy cheeks and lips, with involuntary cry, pointing to the retreating figure, "He has killed the President." And still a moment's strange, incredulous suspense--and then the deluge!--then that mixture of horror, noises, uncertainty--(the sound, somewhere back, of a horse's hoofs clattering with speed) the people burst through chairs and railings, and break them up--that noise adds to the queerness of the scene--there is extricable confusion and terror--women faint--quite feeble persons fall, and are trampled on--many cries of agony are heard--the broad stage suddenly fills to suffocation with a dense and motley crowd, like some horrible carnival--the audience rush generally upon it--at least the strong men do--the actors and actresses are there in their play costumes and painted faces, with moral fright showing through the rouge--some trembling, some in tears, the screams and calls, confused talk--redoubled, trebled--two or three manage to pass up water from the stage to the President's box--others try to clamber up--etc., etc. In the midst of all this the soldiers of the President's Guard, with others, suddenly drawn to the scene, burst in--some 200 altogether--they storm the house, through all the tiers, especially the upper ones--inflamed with fury, literally charging the audience with fixed bayonets, muskets and pistols, shouting "Clear out! clear out!..." Such the wild scene, or a suggestion of it, rather, inside the play house that night. Outside, too, in the atmosphere of shock and craze, crowds of people filled with frenzy, ready to seize any outlet for it, came near committing murder several times on innocent individuals. One such case was especially exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got started against one man, either for words he uttered, or perhaps without any cause at all, and were proceeding at once to hang him on a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen, who placed him in their midst and fought their way slowly and amid great peril toward the station house. It was a fitting episode of the whole affair. The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro, the night, the yells, the pale faces, many frightened people trying in vain to extricate themselves, the attacked man, not yet freed from the jaws of death, looking like a corpse, the silent, resolute half dozen policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady through all those eddying swarms--made indeed a fitting side scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. They gained the station house with the protected man, whom they placed in security for the night and discharged in the morning.