the blow upon his head, and was prostrated to the
floor. Bounding over him, Payne rushed on to the bed, and
commenced wildly striking with the knife at the throat of the
Secretary. Already he had cut the flesh off from one cheek to the
bone, and the blood gushed in torrents over the pillow. This
soldier, just from the hospital, with his wounded leg not yet
healed, enfeebled from his year of suffering and pain, just
prostrated to the floor by a blow from that terrible knife,
springs to his feet, and without one moment's hesitation, without
one moment's thought for himself, save, as he swears, the thought
that he must die to save the Secretary; without a weapon of any
description, with a bravery never surpassed in the annals of any
country, he opposed his naked hands, his wounded and enfeebled
body, to the terrible knife of the gigantic and desperate
murderer. He seized the assassin just as the deadly knife was
about to bury itself in the throat of the Secretary, and then
commenced an unequal struggle which seemingly can only end in the
death of the brave soldier. Having succeeded in dragging Payne
from off the bed, he receives over his shoulder two deep wounds
down his back, inflicting injuries from which one side of (p. 433)
his face and two fingers of one hand are still partially
paralyzed. He received two more wounds under his left shoulder
blade, which proved nearly fatal, and received blows about the
head and face from the revolver. At last Payne, probably becoming
alarmed for his own safety should he spend more time in the
house, wrenched himself loose and fled, stabbing a messenger from
the State Department on his way down stairs. Disregarding his own
desperate wounds, the blood from which was filling his shoes,
with the help of Mr. Seward's daughter Robinson placed the
insensible and mangled form of the Secretary on the bed from
which he had fallen, and re-covering the gashed cheek with its
flesh, he placed his fingers on the wounded artery from which Mr.
Seward's life was fast passing, and with the same coolness, the
same utter self-abandonment, he kept his position, though
scarcely able to stand, and believing himself fatally wounded,
until relieved by the arrival of the Surgeon-General. After the
Secretary's wounds were dressed h