WHICH CONTINUES THE ROMANCE OF ABE AND ANN UNTIL THE FORMER LEAVES NEW SALEM TO BEGIN HIS WORK IN THE LEGISLATURE. ALSO IT DESCRIBES THE COLONELING OF PETER LUKINS.

The next day after his return, Abe received a letter for Ann. She had come over to the store on the arrival of the stage and taken her letter and run home with it. That Saturday's stage brought the new suit of clothes from Springfield. Sunday morning Abe put it on and walked over to Kelso's. Mrs. Kelso was sweeping the cabin.

"We shall have to stand outside a moment," said Jack. "I have an inappeasable hatred of brooms. A lance in the hand of the Black Knight was not more terrible than a broom in the hands of a righteous woman. I had to flee from The Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell when I saw the broom flashing in a cloud of dust and retreated."

He stepped to the door and said: "A truce, madam! Here is the Honorable Abraham Lincoln in his new suit."

Mrs. Kelso came out-of-doors and she and her husband surveyed the tall young Postmaster.

"Well it is, at least, sufficient," said Kelso.

"The coat ought to be a little longer," Mrs. Kelso suggested.

"It will be long enough before I get another," said Abe.

"It is not what one would call an elegant suit but it's all right," Kelso added.

"The fact is, elegance and I wouldn't get along well together," Abe answered. "It would be like going into partnership with Bill Berry."

"Next month you'll be off at the capital and we shall be going to Tazewell County," said Kelso.

"To Tazewell County!"

"Aye. It's a changing world! We should always remember that things can not go on with us as they are. The Governor has given me a job."

"And me a great sadness," said Abe. "You must always let me know where to find you."

"Aye! Many a night you and I shall hear the cock crowing."

It was an Indian summer day of the first week in November. That afternoon Abe went to the tavern and asked Ann to walk out to the Traylors' with him. She seemed to be glad to go. She was not the cheerful, quick footed, rosy cheeked Ann of old. Her face was pale, her eyes dull and listless, her step slow. Neither spoke until they had passed the Waddell cabin and were come to the open fields.

"I hope your letter brought good news," said Abe.

"It was very short," Ann answered. "He took a fever in Ohio and was sick there four weeks and then he went home. In two months he never wrote a word to me. And this one was only a little bit of a letter with no love in it. I don't believe he will ever come back. I don't think he cares for me now or, perhaps, he is married. I don't know. I'm not going to cry about it any more. I can't. I've no more tears to shed. I've given him up."

"Then I reckon the time has come for me to tell you what is on my heart," said Abe. "I love you, Ann. I have loved you for years. I would have told you long ago but I could not make myself believe that I was good enough for you. I love you so much that if you can only be happy with John McNamar I will pray to God that he may turn out to be a good and faithful man and come back and keep his promise." She looked up at him with a kind of awe in her face.

"Oh, Abe!" she whispered. "I had made up my mind that men were all bad but my father. I was wrong. I did not think of you."

"Men are mostly good," said Abe. "But it's very easy to misunderstand them. In my view it's quite likely that John McNamar is better than you think him. I want you to be fair to John. If you conclude that you can not be happy with him give me a chance. I would do my best to bring back the joy of the old days. Sometimes I think that I am going to do something worth while. Sometimes I think that I can see my way far ahead and it looks very pleasant, and you, Ann, are always walking beside me in it."

They proceeded in silence for a moment. A great flock of wild pigeons darkened the sky above them and filled it with the whirr of their wings. The young man and woman stopped to look up at them.

"They are going south," said Abe. "It's a sign of bad weather."

They stood talking for a little time.

"I'm glad they halted us for we have not far to go," Abe remarked. "Before we take another step I wish you could give me some hope to live on—just a little straw of hope."

"You are a wonderful man, Abe," said Ann, touched by his appeal. "My father says that you are going to be a great man."

"I can not hold out any such hope to you," Abe answered. "I'm rather ignorant and badly in debt but I reckon that I can make a good living and give you a comfortable home. Don't you think, taking me just as I am, you could care for me a little?"

"Yes; sometimes I think that I could love you, Abe," she answered. "I do not love you yet but I may—sometime. I really want to love you."

"That is all I can ask now," said Abe as they went on. "Do you hear from Bim Kelso?"

"I have not heard from her since June."

"I wish you would write to her and tell her that I am thinking of going down to St. Louis and that I would like to go and see her."

"I'll write to her to-morrow," said Ann.

They had a pleasant visit and while Ann was playing with the baby she seemed to have forgotten her troubles. They stayed to supper, after which the whole family walked to the tavern with them, Joe and Betsey drawing the baby in their "bumble wagon," which Samson had made for them. When Ann began to show weariness, Abe gently lifted her in his arms and carried her.

That evening Mrs. Peter Lukins called upon Abe at Sam Hill's store where he sat alone, before the fire, reading with two candles burning on the end of a dry goods box at his elbow.

There was an anxious look in her one eye as she accepted his invitation to sit down in the firelight.

"I wanted to see you private 'bout Lukins," she began. "There's them that calls him Bony Lukins but I reckon he ain't no bonier than the everidge run o' men—not a bit—an' if he was I don't reckon his bones orto be throwed at him every time he's spoke to that away."

Peter Lukins was a slim, sober faced, quiet little man with a long nose who worked in the carding mill. He never spoke, save when spoken to, and then with a solemn look as if the matter in hand, however slight, were likely to affect his eternal welfare. In his cups he was speechless and, in a way, dumb with merriment. He answered no questions, he expressed no opinions, he told no stories. He only smiled and broke into roars of laughter, even if there was no one to share his joy, as if convinced, at last, of the hopeless absurdity of life. Some one told of following him from Springfield to New Salem and of hearing him laugh all the way. Many had noted another peculiarity in the man. He seemed always to have a week's growth of beard on his face.

"What can I do about it?" Abe asked.

"I've been hopin' an' wishin' some kind of a decent handle could be put on to his name," said Mrs. Lukins, with her eye upon a knot hole in the counter. "Something with a good sound to it. You said that anything you could do for the New Salem folks you was goin' to do an' I thought maybe you could fix it."

Abe smiled and asked: "Do you want a title?"

"If it ain't plum owdacious I wisht he could be made a Colonel."

"That's a title for fighting men," said Abe.

"An' that man has fit for his life ever since he was born," said Mrs. Lukins. "He's fit the measles an' the smallpox an' the fever an' ager an' conquered 'em."

"I reckon he deserves the title," Abe remarked.

"I ain't sayin' but what there is purtier men," she said, reflectively, as she stuck her finger into the knot hole and felt its edges. "I ain't sayin' but what there is smarter men but I do say that the name o' Bony ain't hardly fit to be heard in company."

"A little whitewash wouldn't hurt it any," said Abe. "I'd gladly give him my title of Captain if I could unhitch it someway."

"Colonel is a more grander name," she insisted. "I call it plum coralapus."

She had thus expressed her notion of the limit of human grandeur.

"Do you like it better than Judge?"

"Wall, Judge has a good sound to it but I'm plum sot on Colonel. If you kin give that name to a horse, which Samson Traylor has done it, I don't see why a man shouldn't be treated just as well."

"I'll see what can be done but if he gets that title he'll have to live up to it."

"I'll make him walk a chalk line—you see," the good woman promised as she left the store.

That evening Abe wrote a playful commission as Colonel for Peter Lukins which was signed in due time by all his friends and neighbors and presented to Lukins by a committee of which Abe was chairman.

Coleman Smoot—a man of some means who had a farm on the road to Springfield—was in the village that evening. Abe showed him the commission and asked him to sign it.

"I'll sign it on one condition," said Smoot.

"What is that?" Abe asked.

"That you'll give me a commission."

"A man like you can't expect too much. Would you care to be a General?"

"I wouldn't give the snap of my finger for that. What I want to be is your friend."

"You are that now, aren't you?" Abe asked.

"Yes, but I haven't earned my commission. You haven't given me a chance yet. What can I do to help you along?"

Abe was much impressed by these kindly words. "My friends do not often ask what they can do for me," he said. "I suppose they haven't thought of it. I'll think it over and let you know."

Three days later he walked out to Coleman Smoot's after supper. As they sat together by the fireside Abe said:

"I've been thinking of your friendly question. It's dangerous to talk that way to a man like me. The fact is I need two hundred dollars to pay pressing debts and give me something in my pocket when I go to Vandalia. If you can not lend it to me I shall think none the less of you."

"I can and will," said Smoot. "I've been watching you for a long time. A man who tries as hard as you do to get along deserves to be helped. I believe in you. I'll go up to Springfield and get the money and bring it to you within a week or so."

Abe Lincoln had many friends who would have done the like for him if they could, and he knew it.

"Every one has faith in you," said Smoot. "We expect much of you and we ought to be willing to do what we can to help."

"Your faith will be my strength if I have any," said Abe.

On his way home that night he thought of what Jack Kelso had said of democracy and friendship.

On the twenty-second of November a letter came to Ann from Bim Kelso which announced that she was going to New Orleans for the winter with her husband. Thereupon Abe gave up the idea of going to St. Louis and six days later took the stage for the capital, at Rutledge's door, where all the inhabitants of the village had assembled to bid him good-by. Ann Rutledge with a flash of her old playfulness kissed him when he got into the stage. Abe's long arm was waving in the air as he looked back at his cheering friends while the stage rumbled down the road toward the great task of his life upon which he was presently to begin in the little village of Vandalia.

WHEREIN THE ROUTE OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IS SURVEYED AND SAMSON AND HARRY SPEND A NIGHT IN THE HOME OF HENRY BRIMSTEAD AND HEAR SURPRISING REVELATIONS, CONFIDENTIALLY DISCLOSED, AND ARE CHARMED BY THE PERSONALITY OF HIS DAUGHTER ANNABEL.

Early in the autumn of that year the Reverend Elijah Lovejoy of Alton had spent a night with the Traylors on his way to the North. Sitting by the fireside he had told many a vivid tale of the cruelties of slavery.

"I would not have you think that all slave-holders are wicked and heartless," he said. "They are like other men the world over. Some are kind and indulgent. If all men were like them, slavery could be tolerated. But they are not. Some men are brutal in the North as well as in the South. If not made so by nature they are made so by drink. To give them the power of life and death over human beings, which they seem to have in parts of the South, is a crime against God and civilization. Our country can not live and prosper with such a serpent in its bosom. No good man should rest until the serpent is slain."

"I agree with you," said Samson.

"I knew that you would," the minister went on. "We have already had some help from you but we need more. I take it as a duty which God has laid upon me to help every fugitive that reaches my door. Thousands of New Englanders have come into Illinois in the last year. They will help the good work of mercy and grace. If you hear three taps upon your window after dark or the hoot of an owl in your dooryard you will know what it means. Fix some place on your farm where these poor people who are seeking the freedom which God wills for all His children, may find rest and refreshment and security until they have strength to go on."

Within a week after the visit of Mr. Lovejoy, Samson and Harry built a hollow haystack about half-way from the house to the barn. The stack had a comfortable room inside of it about eight feet by seven and some six feet in height. Its entrance was an opening near the bottom of the stack well screened by the pendant hay. But no fugitive came to occupy it that winter.

Early in March Abe wrote a letter to Samson in which he said:

Soon after the new year of 1835 Samson and Harry moved the Kelsos to Tazewell County. Mr. Kelso had received an appointment as Land Agent and was to be stationed at the little settlement of Hopedale near the home of John Peasley.

"I hate to be taking you so far away," said Samson.

"Hush, man," said Kelso. "It's a thing to be thought about only in the still o' the night."

"I shall be lonesome."

"But we live close by the wells of wisdom and so shall not be comfortless."

Late in the afternoon Harry and Samson left the Kelsos and their effects at a small frame house in the little village of Hopedale. The men had no sooner begun to unload than its inhabitants came to welcome the newcomers and help them in the work of getting settled. When the goods were deposited in The dooryard Samson and Harry drove to John Peasley's farm. Mr. Peasley recognized the big, broad-shouldered Vermonter at the first look.

"Do I remember you?" he said. "Well, I guess I do. So does my barn door. Let me take hold of that right hand of yours again. Yes, sir. It's the same old iron hand. Many Ann!" he called as his wife came out of the door. "Here's the big man from Vergennes who tossed the purty slaver."

"I see it is," she answered. "Ain't ye comin' in?"

"We've been moving a man to Hopedale and shall have to spend the night somewhere in this neighborhood," said Samson. "Our horses are played out."

"If you try to pass this place I'll have ye took up," said Peasley. "There's plenty of food in the house an' stable."

"Look here-that's downright selfish," said his wife, "If we tried to keep you here Henry Brimstead would never forgive us. He talks about you morning, noon and night. Any one would think that you was the Samson that slew the Philistines."

"How is Henry?" Samson asked.

"He married my sister and they're about as happy as they can be this side the river Jordan," she went on. "They've got one o' the best farms in Tazewell County and they're goin' to be rich. They've built 'em a splendid house with a big spare room in it. Henry would have a spare room because he said that maybe the Traylors would be comin' here to visit 'em some time."

"Yes, sir; I didn't think o' that," said Peasley. "Henry and his wife would holler if we didn't take ye over there. It's only a quarter of a mile. I'll show ye the way and we'll all come over this evening and have a talkin' bee."

Samson was pleased and astonished by the look of Brimstead and his home and his family and the account of his success. The man from the sand flats had built a square, two-story house with a stairway and three rooms above it and two below. He was cleanly shaved, save for a black mustache, and neatly dressed and his face glowed with health and high spirits. A handsome brown-eyed miss of seventeen came galloping up the road on her pony and stopped near them.

"Annabel, do you remember this man?" Brimstead asked.

The girl looked at Samson.

"He is the man who helped us out of Flea Valley," said the girl.

Brimstead leaned close to the ear of Samson and said in a low tone:

"Say, everything knew how to jump there. I had a garden that could hop over the fence and back ag'in. Sometimes it was there and sometimes it was off on a vacation. I jumped as soon as I got the chance."

"We call it No Santa Claus Land," said Samson. "Do ye remember how the little girl clung to the wagon?"

"That was me," said a small miss of ten who ran out of the door into the arms of the big man and kissed him.

"Would you mind if I kissed you?" Annabel asked.

"I would be sorry if you didn't," said Samson. "Here's my boy, Harry Needles. You wouldn't dare kiss him I guess?'

"I would be sorry, too, if you didn't," Harry laughed as he took her hand.

"I'm afraid you'll have to stay sorry," said Annabel turning red with embarrassment. "I never saw you before."

"Better late than never," Samson assured her. "You don't often see a better fellow."

The girl laughed, with a subtle look of agreement in her eyes. Then came up from the barn the ragged little lad of No Santa Claus Land—now a sturdy, bright eyed, handsome boy of eight.

The horses were put out and all went in to supper.

"I have always felt sorry for any kind of a slave?" said Samson as they sat down. "When I saw you on the sand plains you were in bondage."

"Say, I'll tell ye," said Brimstead, as he leaned toward Samson, seeming to be determined at last to make a clean breast of it. "Say, I didn't own that farm. It owned me. I got a sandy intellect. Couldn't get anything out of it but disappointment. My farm was mortgaged to the bank and I was mortgaged to the children. I couldn't even die."

Samson wrote in his diary that night:

"The man that's a fool and don't know it is a good deal worse off," said Samson.

"Say, I'll tell ye he's worse off but he's happier. If it hurts there's hope for ye."

"They tell me you've prospered," said Samson.

Brimstead spoke in a most confidential tone as he answered: "Say, I'll tell ye—no wise man is ever an idiot but once. I wouldn't care to spread it around much but we're gettin' along. I've built this house and got my land paid for. You see we are only four miles from the Illinois River on a good road. I can ship my grain to Alton or St. Louis or New Orleans without much trouble. I've invented a machine to cut it and a double plow and I expect to have them both working next year. They ought to treble my output at least."

After supper Brimstead showed models of a mowing machine with a cut bar six feet long, and a plow which would turn two furrows.

"That's what we need on these prairies," said Samson. "Something that'll turn 'em over and cut the crop quicker."

"Say, I'll tell ye," said Brimstead as if about to disclose another secret. "I found after I looked the ground over here that I needed a brain. I began to paw around an' discovered a rusty old brain among my tools. It hadn't been used for years. I cleaned an' oiled the thing an' got it workin'. On a little Vermont farm you could git along without it but here the ground yells for a brain. We don't know how to use our horses. They have power enough to do all the hard work, if we only knew how to put it into wheels and gears. We must begin to work our brains as well as our muscles on a farm miles long an' wide."

"It ain't fair to expect the land to furnish all the fertility," said Samson.

Brimstead's face glowed as he outlined his vision:

"These great stretches of smooth, rich land just everlastingly ram the spurs into you and keep your brain galloping. Mine is goin' night and day. The prairies are a new thing and you've got to tackle 'em in a new way. I tell you the seeding and planting and mowing and reaping and threshing is all going to be done by machinery and horses. The wheel will be the foundation of the new era."

"You're right," said Samson.

"How are you gettin' along?"

"Rather slow," Samson answered. "It's hard to get our stuff to market down in the Sangamon country. Our river isn't navigable yet. We hope that Abe Lincoln, who has just been elected to the Legislature, will be able to get it widened and straightened and cleaned up so it will be of some use to us down there."

"I've heard of him. They call him Honest Abe, don't they?"

"Yes; and he is honest if a man ever was."

"That's the kind we need to make our laws," said Mrs. Brimstead. "There are not many men who get a reputation for honesty. It ought to be easy, but it isn't."

"Men are pretty good in the main," said Samson. "But ye know there are not so many who can exactly toe the mark. They don't know how or they're too busy or something. I guess I'm a little careless, and I don't believe I'm a bad fellow either. Abe's conscience don't ever sit down to rest. He traveled three miles one night to give back four cents that he had overcharged a customer. I'd probably have waited to have her come back, and by that time it might have slipped my mind or maybe she would have moved away. I suppose that in handling dollars we're mostly as honest as Abe, but we're apt to be a little careless with the cents. Abe toed the penny mark, and that's how he got his reputation. The good God has given him a sense of justice that is like a chemist's balance. It can weigh down to a fraction of a grain. Now he don't care much about pennies. He can be pretty reckless with 'em. But when they're a measure on the balance, he counts 'em careful, I can tell ye."

"Say, I'll tell ye," said Brimstead. "Honesty is like Sapington's pills. There's nothing that's so well recommended. It has a great many friends. But Honesty has to pay prompt. We don't trust it long. It has poor credit. When we have to give a dollar's worth of work to correct an error of four cents, we're apt to decide that Honesty don't pay. But that's when it pays best. We've heard the jingle o' them four cents 'way up here in Tazewell County, an' long before you told us. They say he's a smart talker an' that he can split ye wide open laughin'."

"He's a great story-teller, but that's a small part of him," said Samson. "He's a kind of a four horse team. He knows more than any man I ever saw and can tell it and he can wrestle like old Satan and swing a scythe or an axe all day an' mighty supple. He's one of us common folks and don't pretend to be a bit better. He is, though, and we know it, but I don't think he knows it."

"Say, there ain't many of us smart enough to keep that little piece of ignorance in our heads," said Brimstead. "It's worth a fortune, now—ain't it?"

"Is he going to marry the Rutledge girl?" was the query of Mrs. Brimstead.

"I don't think so," Samson answered, a little surprised at her knowledge of the attachment. "He's as humly as Sam Hill and dresses rough and ain't real handy with the gals. Some fellers are kind o' fenced in with humliness and awkwardness."

Brimstead expressed his private opinion in a clearly audible whisper: "Say, that kind o' protection is better'n none. A humly boy don't git tramped on an' nibbled too much."

Annabel and Harry sat in a corner playing checkers. They seemed to be much impressed by the opinion of Mr. Brimstead. For a moment their game was forgotten.

"That boy has a way with the gals," Samson laughed. "There's no such fence around either of them."

"They're both liable to be nibbled some," said Brimstead.

"I like to see 'em have a good time," said his wife. "There are not many boys to play with out here."

"The boys around here are all fenced in," said Annabel. "There's nobody here of my age but Lanky Peters, who looks like a fish, and a red-headed Irish boy with a wooden leg."

"Say, she's like a woodpecker in a country where there ain't any trees," said Brimstead, in his confidential tone.

"No I'm not," the girl answered. "A woodpecker has wings and the right to use them."

"Cheer up. A lot of people will be moving in here this spring—more boys than you could shake a stick at," Mrs. Brimstead remarked, cheerfully.

"If I shake any stick at them, it will be a stick of candy, for fear of scaring them away," said Annabel, with a laugh.

Brimstead said to Samson: "Say, I'll tell ye, you're back in a cove. You must get out into the current."

"And give the young folks a chance to play checkers together," said Samson.

"Say, I'll tell ye," said Brimstead. "This country is mostly miles. They can be your worst enemy unless you get on the right side of 'em. Above all, don't let 'em get too thick between you an' your market. When you know about where it is, keep the miles behind ye. Great markets will be springin' up in the North. You'll see a big city growin' on the southern shore of Lake Michigan before long. I think there will be better markets to the north than there are to the south of us."

"By jingo!" Samson exclaimed. "Your brain is about as busy as a beehive on a bright summer day."

"Say, don't you mention that to a livin' soul," said Brimstead. "My brain began to chase the rainbow when I was a boy. It drove me out o' Vermont into the trail to the West and landed me in Flea Valley. Now I'm in a country where no man's dreams are goin' to be big enough to keep up with the facts. We're right under the end o' the rainbow and there's a pot o' gold for each of us."

"The railroad will be a help in our fight with the miles," said Samson.

"All right. You get the miles behind ye and let the land do the waiting. It won't hurt the land any, but you'd be spoilt if you had to wait twenty years."

The Peasleys arrived and the men and women spent a delightful hour traveling without weariness over the long trail to beloved scenes and the days of their youth. Every day's end thousands were going east on that trail, each to find his pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow of memory.

Before they went to bed that night Brimstead paid his debt to Samson, with interest, and very confidentially.

At daylight in the morning the team was at the door ready to set out for the land of plenty. As Samson and Harry were making their farewells, Annabel asked the latter:

"May I whisper something in your ear?"

"I was afraid you wouldn't," he said.

He bent his head to her and she kissed his cheek and ran away into the house.

"That means come again," she called from the door, with a laugh.

"I guess I'll have to—to get even," he answered.

"That's a pretty likely girl," said Samson, as they were driving away.

"She's as handsome as a picture."

"She is—no mistake!" Samson declared. "She's a good-hearted girl, too. You can tell that by her face and her voice. She's as gentle as a kitten, and about as wide awake as a weasel."

"I don't care much for girls these days," Harry answered. "I guess I'll never get married."

"Nonsense! A big, strapping, handsome young feller like you, only twenty years old! Of course you'll get married."

"I don't see how I'm ever going to care much for another girl," the boy answered.

"There are a lot o' things in the world that you don't see, boy. It's a big world and things shift around a good deal and some of our opinions are apt to move with the wind like thistledown."

It was a long, wearisome ride back to the land of plenty, over frozen ground, with barely an inch of snow upon it, under a dark sky, with a chilly wind blowing.

"After all, it's home," said Samson, when late in the evening they saw the lighted windows of the cabin ahead. When they had put out their horses and come in by the glowing fire, Samson lifted Sarah in his arms again and kissed her.

"I'm kind o' silly, mother, but I can't help it—you look so temptin'," said Samson.

"She looks like an angel," said Harry, as he improved his chance to embrace and kiss the lady of the cabin.

"The wind has been peckin' at us all day," said Samson. "But it's worth it to get back home and see your face and this blazin' fire."

"And the good, hot supper," said Harry, as they sat down at the table.

They told of the Brimsteads and their visit.

"Well, I want to know!" said Sarah. "Big house and plenty o' money! If that don't beat all!"

"That oldest girl is the thing that beats all," said Samson. "She's as handsome as Bim."

"I suppose Harry fell in love with her," Sarah suggested, with a smile.

"I've lost my ability to fall in love," said the young man.

"It will come back—you see," said Sarah. "I'm going to get her to pay us a visit in the spring."

Harry went out to feed and water the horses.

"Did you get along all right?" Samson asked.

"Colonel Lukins did the chores faithfully, night and morning," Sarah answered. "His wife helped me with the sewing yesterday. She talked all day about the 'Colonel.' Mrs. Beach, that poor woman from Ohio on the west road who has sent her little girl so often to borrow tea and sugar, came to-day and wanted to borrow the baby. Her baby is sick and her breasts were paining her."

IN WHICH ABE RETURNS FROM VANDALIA AND IS ENGAGED TO ANN, AND THREE INTERESTING SLAVES ARRIVE AT THE HOME OF SAMSON TRAYLOR, WHO, WITH HARRY NEEDLES, HAS AN ADVENTURE OF MUCH IMPORTANCE ON THE UNDERGROUND ROAD.

Again spring had come. The great meadows were awake and full of color. Late in April their green floor was oversown with golden blossoms lying close to the warming breast of the earth. Then came the braver flowers of May lifting their heads to the sunlight in the lengthening grasses—red and white and pink and blue—and over all the bird songs. They seemed to voice the joy in the heart of man. Sarah Traylor used to say that the beauty of the spring more than paid for the loneliness of the winter.

Abe came back from the Legislature to resume his duties as postmaster and surveyor. The evening of his arrival he went to see Ann. The girl was in poor health. She had had no news of McNamar since January. Her spirit seemed to be broken. They walked together up and down the deserted street of the little village that evening. Abe told her of his life in Vandalia and of his hopes and plans.

"My greatest hope is that you will feel that you can put up with me," he said. "I would try to learn how to make you happy. I think if you would help me a little I could do it."

"I don't think I am worth having," the girl answered. "I feel like a little old woman these days."

"It seems to me that you are the only one in the world worth having," said Abe.

"If you want me to, I will marry you, Abe," said she. "I can not say that I love you, but my mother and father say that I would learn to love you, and sometimes I think it is true. I really want to love you."

They were on the bluff that overlooked the river and the deserted mill. They were quite alone looking down at the moonlit plains. A broken sigh came from the lips of the tall young man. He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. He took her hand in both of his and pressed it against his breast and looked down into her face and said:

"I wish I could tell you what is in my heart. There are things this tongue of mine could say, but not that. I shall show you, but I shall not try to tell you. Words are good enough for politics and even for the religion of most men, but not for this love I feel. Only in my life shall I try to express it."

He held her hand as they walked on in silence for a moment.

"About a year from now we can be married," he said. "I shall be able to take care of you then, I think. Meanwhile we will all help you to take care of yourself. You don't look well."

She kissed his cheek and he kissed hers when they parted at the door of the tavern.

"I am sure I shall love you," she whispered.

"Those are the best words that ever came to my ears," he answered, and left her with a solemn sense of his commitment.

Soon after that Abe went to the north line of the county to do some surveying, and on his return, in the last week of May, came out for a talk with the Traylors.

"I've been up to the Kelsos' home and had a wonderful talk with him and Brimstead," said Abe. "They have discovered each other. Kelso lives in a glorious past and Brimstead in a golden future. They're both poets. Kelso is translating the odes of Pindar. Brimstead is constructing the future of Illinois. They laugh at each other and so create a fairly agreeable present."

"Did you see Annabel?" Harry asked.

"About sixty times a minute while I was there. So pretty you can't help looking at her. She's coming down to visit Ann, I hope. If you don't see her every day she's here, I shall lose my good opinion of you. It will be a sure sign that your eyes don't know how, to enjoy themselves."

"We shall all see her and fall in love with her, too, probably," said Sarah.

"She's made on the right pattern of the best material," Abe went on. "She's full of fun and I thought it would be a great thing for Ann. She hasn't had any one to play with of her own age and standing since Bim went away. I was thinking of Harry, too. He needs somebody to play with."

"Much obliged!" the young man exclaimed. "I was thinking that I'd have to take a trip to Hopedale, myself."

"I knew he'd come around," Sarah laughed.

But all unknown to these good people, the divinities were at that moment very busy.

That was the 26th of May, 1835, a date of much importance in the calendar of the Traylors. It had been a clear, warm day, followed by a cloudless, starry night, with a chilly breeze blowing. Between eleven and twelve o'clock Sarah and Samson were awakened by the hoot of an owl in the dooryard. In a moment they heard three taps on a window-pane. They knew what it meant. Both got out of bed and into their clothes as quickly as possible. Samson lighted a candle and put some wood on the fire. Then he opened the door with the candle in his hand. A stalwart, good-looking mulatto man, with a smooth shaven face, stood in the doorway.

"Is the coast clear?" he whispered.

"All clear," Samson answered, in a low tone.

"I'll be back in a minute," said the negro, as he disappeared in the darkness, returning presently with two women, both very black. They sat down in the dim light of the cabin.

"Are you hungry?" Sarah asked.

"We have had only a little bread and butter to-day, madame," said the mulatto, whose speech and manners were like those of an educated white man of the South.

"I'll get you something," said Sarah, as she opened the cupboard.

"I think we had better not stop to eat now, madame," said the negro. "We will be followed and they may reach here any minute."

Harry, who had been awakened by the arrival of the strangers, came down the ladder.

"These are fugitive slaves on their way north," said Samson. "Take them out to the stack. I'll bring some food in a few minutes."

Harry conducted them to their hiding-place, and when they had entered it, he brought a ladder and opened the top of the stack. A hooped shaft in the middle of it led to a point near its top and provided ventilation. Then he crawled in at the entrance, through which Samson passed a pail of food, a jug of water and some buffalo hides. Harry sat with them for a few moments in the black darkness of the stack room to learn whence they had come and whither they wished to go.

"We are from St. Louis, suh," the mulatto answered. "We are on our way to Canada. Our next station is the house of John Peasley, in Tazewell County."

"Do you know a man of the name of Eliphalet Biggs who lives in St. Louis?" Harry asked.

"Yes, suh; I see him often, suh," the negro answered.

"What kind of a man is he?"

"Good when he is sober, suh, but a brute when he is drunk."

"Is he cruel to his wife?"

"He beats her with a whip, suh."

"My God!" Harry exclaimed. "Why don't she leave him?"

"She has left him, suh. She is staying with a friend. It has been hard for her to get away. She has been a slave, too."

Harry's voice trembled with emotion when he answered:

"I am sure that none of her friends knew how she was being treated."

"I suppose that she was hoping an' praying, suh, that he would change."

"I think that one of us will take you to Peasley's to-morrow night," said Harry. "Meanwhile I hope you get a good rest."

With that he left them, filled the mouth of the cave with hay and went into the house. There he told his good friends of what he had heard.

"I shall go down to St. Louis," he said. "I read in the paper that there was a boat Monday."

"The first thing to do is to go to bed," said Sarah. "There's not much left of the night."

They went to bed, but the young man could not sleep. Bim had possession of his heart again. In a kind of half sleep he got the notion that she was sitting by his bedside and trying to comfort him. Then he thought that he heard her singing in the sweet voice of old: