He crossed the Navy-Yard
bridge and rode into Maryland, being joined very soon by Herold. The
assassin and his wretched acolyte came at midnight to Mrs. Surratt's
tavern, and afterward pushed on through the moonlight to the house of an
acquaintance of Booth, a surgeon named Mudd, who set Booth's leg and
gave him a room, where he rested until evening, when Mudd sent them on
their desolate way south. After parting with him they went to the
residence of Samuel Cox near Port Tobacco, and were by him given into
the charge of Thomas Jones, a contraband trader between Maryland and
Richmond, a man so devoted to the interests of the Confederacy that
treason and murder seemed every-day incidents to be accepted as natural
and necessary. He kept Booth and Herold in hiding at the peril of his
life for a week, feeding and caring for them in the woods near his
house, watching for an opportunity to ferry them across the Potomac;
doing this while every wood-path was haunted by government detectives,
well knowing that death would promptly follow his detection, and that a
reward was offered for the capture of his helpless charge that would
make a rich man of any one who gave him up.
With such devoted aid Booth might have wandered a long way; but there
is no final escape but suicide for an assassin with a broken leg.
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