“Here he ceased speaking, Colonel Conger, slipping around to the rear, drew some loose straws through a crack and lit a match upon them. They were dry and blazed up in an instant, carrying a sheet of smoke and flame through the parted planks, and heaving in a twinkling a world of light and heat upon the magazine within. The blaze lit up the black recesses of the great barn till every wasp’s nest and cobweb in the roof was luminous. Behind the blaze, with his eye to a crack, Conger saw Wilkes Booth standing upright upon a crutch. He likens him at this instant to his brother Edwin, whom he says he so much resembled that he half believed, for the moment, the whole pursuit to have been a mistake. At the gleam of the fire Wilkes dropped his crutch, and, carbine in both hands, crept up to the spot to espy the incendiary and shoot him dead.... In vain he peered with vengeance in his look; the blaze that made him visible concealed his enemy. A second he turned, glaring at the fire, as if to leap upon it and extinguish it, but it had made such headway that this was a futile impulse, and he dismissed it. As calmly as upon the battlefield a veteran stands amidst the hail of ball and shell and plunging iron, Booth turned to the door, carbine in poise, and the last resolve of death, which we name despair, set on his high, bloodless forehead. “As so he dashed forward, intent to expire not unaccompanied, a disobedient sergeant at an eye-hole drew upon him the fatal bead. The barn was all glorious with conflagration, and in the beautiful ruin this outlawed man strode like all that we know of wicked valour, stern in the face of death. A shock, a shout, a gathering up of his splendid figure as if to overtrip the stature God gave him, and John Wilkes Booth fell headlong to the floor, lying there in a heap, a little life remaining. ‘He has shot himself!’ cried Baker, unaware of the source of the report, and rushing in, he grasped his arms to guard against any feint or strategy. A moment convinced him that further struggle with the prone flesh was useless. Booth did not move, nor breathe, nor gasp. Conger and two sergeants now entered, and taking up the body, they bore it in haste from the advancing flame, and laid it without upon the grass, all fresh, with heavenly dew. “‘Water,’ cried Conger, ‘bring water.’ “When this was dashed into his face, he revived a moment and stirred his lips. Baker put his ear close down and heard him say: “‘Tell Mother--I die--for my country.’ “They lifted him again, the fire encroaching in hotness upon them, and placed him on the porch before the dwelling.