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 Because wild creatures do not ordinarily rush headlong through the forest, he miscalculated the speed of the intruder whose hoof-beats he had heard. He was still near the middle of the meadow, while the mares, loath to leave the clover beds, were far behind him, when he saw the Raven on Manito-Kinibic dash out of the woods.

The young brave heard the wild stallion's snort of surprise, saw him leap forward and race for the buffalo path, while the mares wheeled and galloped off to the left. In long beautiful bounds the stallion skimmed over the grass to the meadow's lower end where the path reëntered the forest. There he disappeared amid the trees.

The damage having been done, the Raven let Manito-Kinibic do his best for two or three miles. But the wild horse ran like the north wind which blows across the summit of Unaka Kanoos. It was then that the Raven named him, in honor of that north wind which is the swiftest and keenest of all the winds of the mountains. Until his rider checked him, Manito-Kinibic ran a good race. But they saw the wild stallion no more that day.

Even among the Cherokees, great hunters and marvelously skilful trackers, it was considered a noteworthy thing that Corane the Raven and Man-

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 ito-Kinibic the Rattlesnake were able to follow the trail of the chestnut stallion all the way from the eastern slope of the Overhills to the Low Country of the Atlantic coast, more than two hundred miles as the white man reckons distance. Certain circumstances aided the pursuers. Nearly always Northwind kept to the game paths. Until he was well out of the mountains he followed the buffalo road. For many miles through the upper foothills he used the narrow paths trodden out by the deer. Always he chose those paths which led him south or southeast, following the slope of the land.

When he passed from the foothills into the rolling country where the forest was more open and where many prairie-meadows lay embosomed in the woods, the Raven's problem was somewhat harder; and in the Low Country of the coastal plain, so utterly unlike his mountain home, there were moments when the young warrior saw defeat staring him in the face. Yet it was evident that the wild stallion himself was not at home in this land of dense cypress swamps and towering pinewoods, of vast canebrakes and wide wastes of rushes, of dark sluggish rivers winding silently through mossdraped mysterious forests.

If this was the land which some deep-seated instinct had impelled him to seek, it was evidently not what he had expected it to be—not a land like

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 that which he had known westward of the mountains. It was rich beyond measure, affording pasturage of numerous kinds. But in many respects it was strange to him, and his first night within its borders taught him that it bristled with dangers.

He rested that night near the end of a long woods-prairie or open savannah close to a tall canebrake bordering a great swamp. In the late afternoon he had grazed in the savannah amid herds of deer and flocks of tall gray cranes. The air was melodious with the songs of numberless—birds. Over him, as he cropped the grass, passed many wild turkeys coming in from the woods to their roosts in the giant pines of the swamp. Around the margins of a marshy pond scores of graceful milk-white égrets walked to and fro amid hundreds of smaller herons of darker plumage. To the stallion it seemed that he had come to a land of plenty and of peace where no enemies lurked.

The night revealed his mistake. The swamp rang with the cries and roars of hunting beasts and with the long-drawn resonant bellowings of great alligators—a fearful chorus of the wilderness such as he had never heard before. Twice he saw round fiery eyes glaring at him out of the darkness. Once his nose told him that near at hand in the canebrake a puma was passing along one of the winding pathways through the canes. Sleep was impossible;

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 yet, the night being very black, he judged it unsafe to move, fearing to run upon an invisible enemy. He spent the long hours standing, tense and rigid, his senses strained to the utmost, expecting each moment to feel the fangs or claws of some unknown foe.

How long the chestnut stallion remained in the wild swamp region of the Low Country cannot be told. Probably not long, for while food was abundant, the perils were too many. Nor can it be related how he avoided those perils and found his way at last to the edge of the wide salt marshes between the Low Country mainland and the barrier islands along the sea. Day after day Corane the Raven and Manito-Kinibic the Rattlesnake followed him in his wanderings; and day after day the Raven, patient with the long patience of his race, held fast to the resolution which he had formed at the beginning—the resolution not to attempt the capture of the wild stallion until the time should be fully ripe.

He had to wait long for that time, but in one respect fortune favored the young warrior. Except for the Muskogee ambush in the mountain pass, he suffered no interference at the hands of man and indeed saw scarcely a human face between the Overhills and the coast. Even when he had reached the white men's country—where, however, the set-

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 tlements were still small and sparse—the wild horse's fear of human enemies kept both himself and his pursuers out of man's way. The spot where the long chase had its ending was as lonely as the remotest wilderness.

To Northwind, after his long journey, that spot seemed a paradise. To Corane the Raven, viewing it cautiously from the cover of the woods about noon of a warm cloudless June day, it seemed to combine all the conditions essential for his success. A dry level meadow carpeted with short thick grass and shaped like a broad spearhead, lay between a converging river and creek which came together at the meadow's lower end. There, and for some distance along the shore, the land sloped sharply to the river, forming a little bluff about ten feet in height; while beyond the river lay vast marshes stretching for miles towards the hazy line of woods on the barrier isles.

The Raven took in these things at a glance; noted, too, with satisfaction that here and there in the meadow stood clumps of some dense, stiff-branched bush of a kind unknown in the mountains. Then, well pleased, his plan complete to the smallest detail, he let his eyes rest again upon that feature of the scene which was the most important and most gratifying of all.

Almost in the center of the meadow stood North-

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 wind, the wild stallion, alert, arrogant, confident, a picture of lithe, clean-cut beauty and perfectly proportioned strength. But he no longer stood alone. Just beyond him grazed five mares, all of them bays and all of them of one size and build. The Raven knew at once that they were not wild horses and he surmised that they were strays from the white men's stock. But it mattered little whence they had come. The essential fact was that Northwind had taken them as his own, had become their master and protector.

Two hours before midnight, when the moon, almost at the full, swung high above the marshes beyond the river and the grassy expanse of the meadow was bathed in ghostly light, the Raven led Manito-Kinibic from his hiding place in the woods to the edge of the open. There the young brave halted. The big roan, his nostrils tingling with a scent which set his blood on fire, needed no word of instruction. He knew his part and would play it perfectly. Quivering with eagerness, yet too well trained to give way to the fury that possessed him, Manito-Kinibic moved out into the meadow at a slow walk, his hoofs making no sound.

The Raven waited until the roan had become a dim uncertain shape in the moonlight. Then, crouching low, the Indian stole to the nearest bush-clump, thence to another isolated thicket, and

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 thence by a roundabout course to a third. He was halfway down the meadow when he heard the wild stallion's challenge and knew that Manito-Kinibic's keen nose had led the roan straight to his goal. Bending close to the ground, sometimes creeping on all fours, sometimes crawling like a snake, the Raven moved from bush-clump to bush-clump towards the sound.

A fresh breeze blew from the sea across the marshes. The wild stallion, resting with his mares near the meadow's lower end where the creek and river joined, could neither smell nor hear an enemy approaching from the direction of the woods. Manito-Kinibic was scarcely fifty paces distant when Northwind saw him.

A moment the wild horse stood at gaze, his muscles tense for the long leap which would launch him forward in swift flight. Then fear passed out of him and fury took its place. A glance had shown him what the intruder was—a lone stallion, riderless, unaccompanied by man, roaming at will and evidently seeking the bay mares. Loud and shrill rang Northwind's challenge. Instantly he charged his foe.

Manito-Kinibic the Rattlesnake was a veteran of many battles. The fiercest battle of his career was the one which he fought that night in the moonlit meadow where the long chase of the chestnut

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 stallion had its end. Northwind, too, had conquered many rivals to make good his mastery of the wild horse herds; but never before had he faced an antagonist as formidable as the burly roan. With Manito-Kinibic lay the advantage of size and weight; with the wild horse the advantage of quickness and agility. In courage neither surpassed the other. In cunning each was the other's match.

Almost at once they took each other's measure and, despite their fury, fought with instinctive skill, each striving to utilize to the utmost those powers in which he excelled. After his first whirlwind charge, Northwind did not charge again. He knew after that first onset that he must not hurl himself recklessly against the roan's weight and bulk. This was an enemy too big to be overwhelmed; he must be cut to pieces with slashing hoofs and torn to ribbons with ripping, raking teeth. Hence the wild stallion whirled and circled, feinted and reared, dashed in and leaped clear again, like a skilful rapier-man whose opponent wields a broadsword—and wields it well.

For Manito-Kinibic was no blundering bruiser whose sole reliance was his strength. He, too, fought with cunning and skill, manœvering with a lightness which belied his bulk, parrying and thrusting with an adroitness not much inferior to that of his opponent. But apparently realizing the advan-

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 tage which his weight gave him, he strove from the first for close quarters. Furiously, incessantly he forced the fighting, seeking to grip and hold his elusive enemy, rearing high to crush the wild horse with his battering hoofs, plunging forward with all his weight to drive his mighty shoulder against his foe and hurl him to the ground.

It was a fight too furious to last long. A stallion's hoofs and teeth are fearful weapons. A few minutes more must have brought a bloody end to the battle, though no man can say what that end would have been. Suddenly from a bush-clump a shadow darted, sped lightly across the grass, and vanished in a tuft of tall weeds. Northwind did not see it because it was behind him. If Manito-Kinibic saw it he gave no sign.

The battling stallions wheeled and reared, biting and plunging, striking with their forefeet, thrusting, parrying, feinting. Once more the roan hurled himself forward, his small eyes gleaming red, his teeth bared, his heavy hoofs stabbing the air; and once more his slim, long-maned opponent, light as a dancer, lithe as a panther, whirled aside, escaping destruction by an inch.

Again, as they fenced for an opening, rearing high, snorting and squealing, the wild horse's back was turned to the clump of weeds; and again the

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 shadow darted forward, swiftly, noiselessly, gliding over the turf.

Next moment Corane the Raven crouched close behind the chestnut stallion. A half-second more, and he had swung his rawhide thong with the skill for which he was famous. Then, with a shout, he leaped for Manito-Kinibic's head.

Northwind was down. He lay on his side, motionless as a dead thing. The rawhide thong, weighted at its ends, was wrapped around his hind legs, binding them tightly together. The greatest miracle was not the skill with which the Raven had thrown his snare. More wonderful still was the quelling of Manito-Kinibic's battle-fury, the swiftness with which his master brought the raging roan under control. Yet this was merely the result of teaching, of long painstaking instruction. Corane the Raven, the most successful horse-hunter among the Cherokees, owed his success partly to the peculiar methods which he employed and partly to the perfect training of his famous roan.

Manito-Kinibic, his neck and shoulders bloody, his flanks heaving, stood quietly, gazing down at his fallen foe with eyes in which the fire of hatred still glowed; but Northwind, his silky sides streaked with red, lay inert, inanimate, seeming scarcely to

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 breathe. He offered no resistance as the Raven with deft fingers slipped a strong hobble around the slim forelegs and made it fast above each fetlock. There was no terror, no fierceness in the wild horse's large eyes. Instead they seemed singularly calm and soft, as though the brain behind them were lulled with a vision of places far away and days long ago.

Yet, if the chestnut stallion, a prisoner at last, dreamed of some green, daisy-sprinkled forestprairie beyond the mountains, the dream passed quickly. Presently the Raven removed the thong which had held Northwind's hind legs helpless; and instantly the wild horse came to life, panic-stricken, furious, frantic for his freedom.

For a moment he thought himself free. His hind legs were no longer bound. The hobble around his forelegs bound them only loosely. With a snort he heaved upward and leaped away in mad flight—only to pitch headlong to the ground with a force which almost drove the breath from his body. Up he scrambled once more and down again he plunged as his fettered forelegs crumpled under him. Five times he rose and five times he fell before he seemed to realize his helplessness.

For several minutes, then, he lay utterly still. The Raven had remounted Manito-Kinibic. The wild horse could not escape; yet it was well to be

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 prepared for whatever might happen. The ordeal might be over in an hour, or, on the other hand, many hours might pass before Northwind's spirit was broken.

At last he struggled to his feet. The Raven circled him on the roan, watching him keenly. The captive's frenzy seemed to have passed. He was cooler now, steadier on his legs. Sudden anxiety which was almost panic gripped the young Indian. He recalled that once he had seen a hobbled wild horse travel a distance of half a bowshot in short labored bounds before falling; and in a flash he had become aware of a danger hitherto unrealized.

Quickly he slipped from Manito-Kinibic's back and approached Northwind from behind, uncoiling the weighted rawhide thong which he had removed from the wild stallion's hind legs. He would snare those hind legs again and thus make certain of his captive.

By a margin of moments he was too late. Northwind wheeled, bounded forward, and this time he did not fall. He had learned what not one hobbled wild horse in a thousand ever discovered—that while a leap of normal length would throw him every time, he could travel at least a little distance at fair speed if his leaps were very short.

Another bound he made, another and another

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 stiff-legged, labored, heart-breaking—keeping his balance by a miracle. He was more than halfway to the river's edge when the hobble threw him, and though he fell heavily, almost in an instant he was on his feet again, bounding onward as before.

On the very verge of the low bluff the Raven, who had remounted as quickly as possible, drove Manito-Kinibic against the chestnut's flank in a last attempt to turn or throw him. Reeling from the blow, Northwind staggered on the brink. Then, rallying his strength for a supreme effort, he plunged sideways down the steep slope, and the water closed over him.

Some say he was drowned. The Raven never saw him again, though the moon shone brightly on the river. But the water is very deep beside that bluff and there the ebb tide is very strong and swift. It might have borne him quickly beyond the Indian's vision; and since the hobble allowed his forelegs some freedom of action, he might have made shift to swim.

At any rate, when Dunmore the trader told the story of the chestnut stallion that night in Nick Rounder's tavern, an old seafaring man, who was present pricked up his ears and asked the trader certain questions. Then, with a great show of

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 Rh Weem's Life of Washington and the Revised Statutes of Indiana. He studied by the fire-light and practiced writing with a pen made from a buzzard's quill dipped in ink made from brier roots. He practiced writing on the subjects of Temperance, Government, and Cruelty to Animals. The unkindness so often common to those frontier folks shocked his sensitive soul. He practiced speaking by imitating the itinerant preacher and by telling stories to any who would give him an audience. He walked fifteen miles to Boonville to attend court and listen to the lawyers.

At nineteen he was six feet and two inches tall, weighed one hundred and fifty pounds, had long arms and legs, slender body, large and awkward hands and feet, but not a large head. He is pictured as wearing coon-skin cap, linsey-woolsey shirt, and buckskin breeches that were often too short. He said that his father taught him to work but never taught him to love it—but he did work hard and without complaining. He was said to do much more work than any ordinary man at splitting rails, chopping, mowing, ploughing, doing everything that he was asked to do with all his might. It was at this age that he went on the first trip with a flat boat down to New Orleans. This was an interesting adventure; and there had been sorrows, also; his sister Sarah had married and died in child-birth.

In the spring of 1830 the roving spirit of Thomas Lincoln felt the call of the West and they set out for Illinois. John Hanks met them five miles northwest of Decatur in Ma-


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 wonder and a string of sailors' oaths, he spun a queer yarn.

One midnight, he said, while his ship lay at anchor in a river-mouth between two barrier islands, the lookout sighted a big chestnut horse coming down the river with the tide. They manned a boat, got a rope over the horse's head and towed him to the sandy island shore. He seemed almost exhausted, his neck and shoulders were cut and bruised, and how he had come into the river was a mystery since his forelegs were hobbled. They could not take the horse aboard their vessel; so, after cutting the hobble, they left him lying on the beach, apparently more dead than alive. They expected to see his body there in the morning, but when they weighed anchor at sunrise he was gone.

Dunmore believed the old man's story; but others held that he had invented the tale on the spur of the moment, in the hope that the trader would stand him a noggin of rum. However that may be, an odd legend exists today on the barrier islands of the Carolina coast.

The story runs that the slim wiry ponies of those islands, rovers of the beaches and marsh flats, have in their veins the blood of De Soto's Andalusian horses abandoned nearly four centuries ago in the Mississippi wilderness six hundred miles away, beyond the mountains.

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 8 con County, where on a bluff overlooking the muddy Sangamon they built a cabin, split rails, fenced fifteen acres and broke the prairie. Young Lincoln was twenty-one and free, but he remained at home during the summer, helping his father and his devoted step-mother to establish their new home. The following winter he split the historic rails for Mrs. Nancy Miller—"four hundred for every yard of jeans dyed with walnut juice necessary to make him a pair of trowsers."

In the spring, a pioneer adventurer, Denton Offut, engaged Abraham, with Hanks and one other helper, to take a boat load of provisions to New Orleans, for the wages of fifty cents a day and a bonus of sixty dollars for the three. This and the preceding trip down the river gave Lincoln the sight of slavery which caused him to say, "If ever I get a chance to hit that thing I'll hit it hard."

New Salem was a very small village destined to be of only a few years duration. Here Offut erected a small general store and placed Lincoln in charge while Offut having other unimportant business ventures went about the community bragging that his clerk, Lincoln, was the best man in the country and would some day be president of the United States. Offut's boasting attracted the attention of the Clary's Grove boys, who lived near New Salem, and they determined upon a wrestling match between Lincoln and their champion bully, Jack Armstrong. Lincoln did his best to avoid it, and a prominent citizen stopped the encounter. The result was that Armstrong and his gang


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 It seems a fantastic legend; yet the river in which Northwind made his last desperate bid for freedom passes quickly to the sea between two of those barrier isles.

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 Rh became Lincoln's friends and later gave him the most hearty political support at times when the support of just such men as Armstrong was an important political asset.

During this time Lincoln continued his studies, and feeling the need to study English Grammar he ransacked the neighborhood until he found trace of one some six miles away and walked over to buy or borrow it; brought it back in triumph and studied it exhaustively.

About this time we have some narratives concerning his honesty that compare favorably with the story of Washington and the cherry tree. While he was keeping Offut's store a woman overpaid him four pence and when he found the mistake he walked several miles that evening to return the pennies before he slept. On another occasion in selling a half pound of tea he discovered that he had used too small a weight and he hastened forth to make good the deficiency. Indeed one of his chief traits all his life was absolute honesty.

He was chosen to pilot the first steamboat, the Talisman, up the Sangamon. At Springfield they held a banquet to celebrate the event but Lincoln was not invited because they only invited the "gentlemen" and Lincoln was only the pilot.

He spent all his spare time studying Law or History, and had been from his youth an admirer of the romantic figure of Henry Clay. He adopted most of Clay's principles as his own, especially that of the gradual, compensated emancipation of slaves, to which ideal he clung all his life. With such interests, it was


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 10 natural that when Offut failed and his job as store clerk ended, he should announce himself as a candidate for the legislature. His campaign was interrupted by the Black Hawk War. Lincoln volunteered. The Clary's Grove boys enlisted and elected him captain. He showed his kindness and courage when during the campaign he found his whole command, mutinous and threatening; and facing them he placed his own body between them and a poor friendly Indian, who, with safe conduct from General Cass, had taken refuge in camp. He saw no fighting and killed no Indians but was long afterward able to convulse Congress with a humorous account of his "war record." The war ended in time for him to get back and stump the county just before the election in which he was defeated.

In partnership with a man named Berry they bought out the little store in New Salem; but Berry drank and neglected the business. Lincoln was strictly temperate, but he spent all his spare moments studying Blackstone, a copy of which legal classic he had fortunately found in a barrel of rubbish he had obligingly bought from a poor fellow in trouble.

With both members of the firm thus preoccupied the business "winked out." Berry died, leaving Lincoln the debts of the firm, twelve hundred dollars,—to him an appalling sum, which he humorously called "the national debt"; and on which he continued to make payments when he could for the next fifteen years. For a time he was postmaster of New Salem, an office so small that Andrew Jackson


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 Rh must have overlooked it. But the experience shows how scrupulous he always was; for when years afterward a government agent came to Springfield to make settlement Lincoln drew forth the very coins that he had collected in the postoffice, and though he had sorely needed the loan of them he had never even borrowed them for temporary use.

For a time he had a better position as Deputy Surveyor of Sangamon County. His work was accurate and he was doing well when in 1834 he again announced as a candidate for the legislature and was elected.

At Vandalia at the session of the legislature he first saw Stephen A. Douglas, then a lobbyist, and said of him, "He is the least man I ever saw." Lincoln at this session seemed to be learning, studying men and methods and prudently preparing for future success rather than endeavoring to seize opportunities prematurely.

This is the time when Lincoln fell in love with Ann Rutledge, a beautiful young woman of New Salem who was already betrothed to another. The other lover went East and did not return. Lincoln had hopes, but Ann took sick and died of brain fever. He was allowed to see her as she lay near the end, and the effect upon his kindly nature was terrible. There settled upon him a deep despondency. That fall and winter he wandered alone in the woods along the Sangamon, almost distracted with sorrow. When he seemed on the verge of insanity a friend, Bowling Green, took him to his own home and nursed him back to


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HALF hour after dawn Long John Larkin, the engineer, and Philip Lee, the negro deck hand, saw an ugly thing. They had fought a good fight until then—an almost hopeless fight against a furious southwest gale which long ago had smashed the Sea Swallow's rudder and was now driving the thirty-foot launch toward breakers which would annihilate her. Capt. Mat Norman had directed that fight with the coolness and skill which Larkin and Lee had learned to expect of him in all emergencies. Then, as though some nerve within him had snapped, he seemed to go suddenly insane with fear.

He shouted something to Larkin, but his voice was cracked from much yelling against the gale, and the wind whirled his words away unheard. Then he tried to throw Larkin overboard. Long John was the bigger man and shook him off. Next he made for Lee, and the negro, his face the color of ashes, seized a heavy bar of iron and warned him back.

Keeping his footing with difficulty, Norman stag-

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 12 health, and the grief settled into that temperamental melancholy, which, relieved only by his humor, was part of the deep mystic there was in him, part of the prophet, the sadness that so early baptised him in the tragedy of life, and taught him to pity a suffering world.

Again he ran for the legislature, announcing his policy: "for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens; for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females). If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon as my constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me. While acting as their representative I shall be governed by their will upon all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is; and upon all others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will best advance their interests." He was always fundamentally democratic, was so close to the heart of humanity that he felt its mighty pulsations and knew intuitively what his people were thinking. His contemporaries thought that he had a dependable occult sense of public opinion.

One incident of this campaign shows Lincoln's versatility at repartée. George Forquer, who had been a Whig, changed over to be a Democrat and was appointed Register of the Land Office. His house, the finest in Springfield, had a lightning rod, the only one that Springfield had ever seen. At a meeting near Springfield, Lincoln spoke, and when he had finished, Forquer replied with some condescension,


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 gered across the cockpit and into the cabin. In a moment he reappeared, bringing with him Rusty, the little red Irish terrier that for four years had been a member of the Sea Swallow's crew. He flung the dog into the black, raging sea, then sprang at Larkin, his arms outstretched, evidently hoping to push the engineer over the side.

Long John ducked, falling forward into the cockpit, and Norman, unable to check his onset, plunged headlong into the ocean.

So, thirty minutes later, Larkin and Lee went with the Sea Swallow into the white inferno of the breakers, believing that Mat Norman, the coolest man that either of them knew, had gone mad with terror in the storm. Rusty, the little Irish terrier, would have told them if he could that they were mistaken, for he knew the man who was his god better than either Lee or Larkin knew him. Rusty would have told them that what Norman did was the right thing to do—that if they had jumped when Norman tried to make them jump, they might have escaped death even as Rusty himself escaped it.

The launch was driving toward the shoals and sand bars of the inlet. There she must inevitably be smashed to matchwood and every man in her would be pounded to a pulp. To stay with her was certain death. To jump and swim for it before she

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 Rh calling Lincoln the "young man." Lincoln listened to the attack with folded arms and then made a spirited reply ending with the words: "The gentleman calls me a young man. I am older in years than I am in the tricks and trades of politicians. I desire to live and I desire place and distinction, but I would rather die now than, like the gentleman, live to see the day that I would change my politics for an office worth three thousand dollars per year, and then feel compelled to erect a lightning rod to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God."

The Whig ticket was elected, Lincoln leading, and the Sangamon delegation, seven representatives and two senators all over six feet tall were called the "Long Nine." At Vandalia Lincoln was the leader of the Long Nine and labored to advance legislation for public improvements to be financed by the sale of public lands. He confided to a friend that he was dreaming of the Governorship and was ambitious to become the "DeWitt Clinton of Illinois."

The Assembly voted for a colossal scheme of railroads and canals, and authorized a loan of twelve millions. These vast projects afforded unlimited opportunities for special legislation and in all this atmosphere of manoeuvre Lincoln was most skillful. He knew human nature and how to handle it. Log-rolling was the order of the day and so skillfully did the Long Nine function that they succeeded in removing the capital from Vandalia to Springfield. Though Lincoln did prove that he knew


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 entered the inlet's shallow mouth was the only chance, and Norman alone had been cool enough to recognize it. Rusty might not have been able to explain all this in detail; but if he had perished in the huge ocean surges into which his master had hurled him, he would have gone down knowing that Norman had done for him all that any man could do. Of this sort was Rusty's love and Rusty's faith.

The sun was two hours high when the little red dog came ashore. A great white-maned comber tossed him on the upper beach and left him there, to all outward seeming stone dead. A long while he lay where the wave had left him, sprawled on his side, limp and motionless. With that wave the storm tide reached its crest; and, magically, when the tide had turned and the ebb had set in, the wind, which had slackened to a stiff breeze, died away altogether, the gray blanket vanished from the face of the sky and the warm May sunshine fell like a blessing upon beach and ocean. Of all this Rusty, inert on the white sand, the flame of life flickering feebly in his brine-soaked body, knew nothing. Nor did he know that the grim storm scavengers of the aerial patrol were abroad and that already their scouts had spied him from the upper air.

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 14 "the tricks and trades of the politician" he was true to his convictions; as shown by the fact that, when the legislature passed resolutions "highly disapproving" of the formation of abolition societies and the doctrines promulgated by them, he voted against the resolutions; and furthermore he drew up a protest against the resolutions, and inducing his colleague, Dan Stone, to sign it with him, had his protest entered on the journal for March 3, 1837. While this protest was cautiously worded it did declare "the institution of slavery is founded upon injustice and bad policy." This was a real gratuitous expression of a worthy ideal contrary to self interest, for his constituents were at that time certainly not in any way opposed to slavery. It was only within a few months after this very time that the atrocious persecution and murder of Lovejoy occurred in the neighboring town of Alton.

When the Long Nine came home bringing the capital with them Springfield planned such a celebration as had not been seen since the day the Talisman came up the Sangamon. To this banquet Lincoln was not only invited but placed at the head of the board; having been only the pilot of the enterprise this time did not exclude him. He made a speech and made many friends in Springfield. The time was now opportune for him to move to Springfield. So in the year 1837, Abraham Lincoln, being twenty-eight years of age and a lawyer, packed his meager possessions in a pair of saddle-bags and moved to the new Capital, then a town of less than two thousand inhabitants,


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 From all directions they came, hurrying on wide somber wings to the feast—first one, then another, then a third, then five more arriving all at once. They were black vultures, all of them, cowardly carrion feeders, yet bold enough to pick the eyes from helpless living victims; but not until twelve of them stood on the sands around the spot where Rusty lay did the boldest make a forward move. His first awkward hop was the signal for a general onset. Long hooked beaks backed by hideous naked heads were reaching for Rusty's eyes, scaly, sharp-clawed feet were trampling his body, when with an angry snarl a lithe tawny beast charged into the midst of the mob. For a moment there was a mad confusion of wildly beating black pinions to the accompaniment of hisses and growls. Then, as the vultures scattered in all directions and, running awkwardly to get a start, rose with swift, powerful wing beats, the big wildcat turned to examine his find.

What he saw amazed him. He had expected nothing like this. A dead fish was what he had hoped for, or, failing that, a dead sea bird—titbits which were much to his liking and for which he was accustomed to search the beaches after storms. Generally, these beach hunts of his were conducted by night; but this storm had not ended until well after dawn, and he knew that if he waited until

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 Rh here to begin a new era in his life. Besides being very poor he still carried the burden of the "national debt" left to him from the failure of the partnership with Berry, but he had friends and a reputation for honesty. In time he pays the debt, and his friends increase in numbers.

The morning that Lincoln went into the store of Joshua Speed in Springfield, and indicated that he was looking for a place to stay, Speed said: "The young man had the saddest face I ever saw." Speed indicated that Lincoln could share Speed's own bed in a room above; Lincoln shambled up, dropped his saddle bags, shambled down again and said: "Well, Speed, I am moved." With John T. Stewart, his comrade in the Black Hawk campaign, he formed a law partnership. Lincoln and Stewart were both too much interested in politics to give their undivided devotion to the law. During their four years together they made a living, and had work enough to keep them busy but it was not of the kind that proved either very interesting or lucrative.

He spent much time making public speeches on a variety of occasions and subjects, obviously practicing the art of eloquent address for his own improvement. In 1838 he was again elected to the legislature and was minority candidate for Speaker.

Now Mrs. N. W. Edwards was one of the local aristocrats of Springfield, and her sister, Mary Todd from Kentucky, came to visit her. Mary Todd was beautiful and Lincoln and


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 the following evening the vultures and buzzards, marvelously efficient watchers of the sands, would forestall him and take for themselves whatever savory morsels the gale had brought to his island. So the old lynx had compromised with caution, the caution which forbade him to patrol the open beach by day.

All morning he had been slinking like a ghost along the fringe of the jungle, keeping carefully under cover, pausing often to peer out from his leafy shelter and search the bare white strand above high-water mark. The wind had driven the tide much higher than usual, though by no means as high as in the great hurricanes that came now and then in late summer and fall. It was scarcely ten yards from the jungle's margin to the strip of soft sand where the waves had deposited whatever storm victims they had brought; and three times the lynx, after making sure that no foeman was in sight, had made a quick dash out into the open, picked up something in his jaws and slunk back to the green covert of the thicket's edge.

His first find was a least tern, a bird so small that it had merely whetted his appetite. Next, the sharply contrasting black-and-white plumage and crimson bill of a dead oyster-catcher caught his eye. This was a more satisfying meal; and after he had also found and devoured a turnstone and

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 16 Douglas were rivals for her hand. Observers at the time thought that with a brilliant and talented girl the graceful and dashing Douglas would surely be preferred. But Miss Todd made her own selection and she and Lincoln were engaged to be married on New Year's day, 1841.

The day came and the wedding was not solemnized. Now there came upon him again that black and awful melancholy. He wandered about in utter gloom. To help him, his good friend Joshua Speed took him away to Kentucky for a trip. Upon his return a reconciliation with Mary Todd led to their marriage, November, 1842. To Lincoln's kindly manner, his considerateness and his self-control, she was the opposite. The rule "opposites attract" may explain the union, and if the marriage was not ideally happy it may be conjectured that one more happy might have interfered with that career for which Destiny was preparing him.

In 1841, Stewart went to Congress and Lincoln dissolved the partnership to form another with Judge Stephen T. Logan who was accounted the best lawyer in Illinois. Contact with Logan made Lincoln a more diligent student and an abler practitioner of the law. But two such positive personalities could not long work in harmony, so in 1843 Lincoln formed a partnership with William H. Herndon, a man of abolitionist inclinations who remained Lincoln's junior partner until Lincoln's death and became his biographer. But they were very poor. The struggle was hard, and Lincoln and


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 a black-breasted plover, which he discovered lying side by side on the slope of a low dune, his hunger was temporarily appeased. Nevertheless, curiosity led him to wander a half mile farther along the jungle edge; and when, just after rounding a little myrtle-grown hillock, he saw the vultures grouped about a reddish object on the upper beach, he Jumped to the conclusion that here at last was the delicacy for which he had been looking—a freshly killed fish, probably a small surf bass. A quick glance showed him that the coast was clear and he charged the vultures instantly.

The discovery that the object which had attracted the scouts of the air patrol was not a bass, but a small red dog, worked a sudden and startling change in the big wildcat. He jumped five feet to the right and crouched close to the sand, tawny body quivering, pale eyes glinting, white fangs gleaming in snarling jaws. Into his brain like specters out of the dim past rushed a host of hateful memories; memories of a day of terror when, as a half-grown cub, he had seen his mother torn to pieces by a pack of dogs and he himself had escaped by a miracle to nurse a long gash on his flank which had tortured him for days.

Since then he had hated and feared dogs above all other enemies, hating them almost as much as he feared them. They seldom came to his lonely bar-

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 Rh his bride were of necessity very frugal. In 1841 he might have had the nomination for Governor, but he declined it; having given up his ambition to become the "DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." It will be remembered that the internal improvement theories had not worked so well in practice. The panic of 1837 had convinced both him and his supporters of the unwisdom of attempting such improvements on too large a scale at one time. Though he had been mistaken he seems not to have lost the support of his followers, for they were mistaken with him; and the experience shows that "it is more popular for a politician to be with his constituents in the wrong than to be in the right against them."

Though he declined the nomination for Governor, his ambitious wife encouraged his natural inclination to keep his eye on the political field, and to glance in the direction of Congress. His ambitions were temporarily thwarted. On Washington's birthday in 1842, during the Washington Temperance movement he made a speech on temperance. While the whole address was admirable and conceived in a high humanitarian tone it did not please all. He was full of a wise and gentle tolerance that sprang alike from his knowledge and his love of men.

When accused of being a temperance man he said "I don't drink."

He was criticised, and because of this, and because his wife was an Episcopalian, and an aristocrat, and because he had once accepted a challenge to fight a duel, which friends pre-


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 rier island, separated from the mainland by a waste of marsh through which wound many deep tidal creeks; but when they did come, to trail the deer through the dense island thickets and set the green jungle ringing with wild, terrible, fierce music, the lynx always sought his safest refuge and lay there trembling and growling, living again that day of terror long ago and the days of agony that followed it.

Those memories gripped him now. As he crouched on the sand six feet from Rusty's motionless form, the fear which shook his yellow-brown striped and spotted body struggled with the hate glaring out of his savage eyes. He knew instantly that the dog was alive. His first impulse bade him flee; but though his nostrils reeked with the dog scent and his heart was cold with the fear which that scent inspired, his eyes told another story and stirred another emotion.

They told him that this dog was small, little more than half his own size and weight; that it was weak to the point of impotence, utterly powerless to defend itself, unconscious of the lynx's presence, insensible or asleep. Little by little, as he watched, hate triumphed over fear; and little by little, as the minutes passed, the glare of those round unwinking eyes grew more savage and more sinister. Here was an easy victory, a safe and swift revenge. One

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 18 vented, his congressional ambitions had to be postponed. Also there were other candidates. He stood aside for Hardin and for Baker. In 1844 he was on the Whig electoral ticket and stumped the state for Henry Clay whom he greatly admired.

Finally in 1846 the Whigs nominated him for Congress. The Democrats nominated the pioneer Methodist preacher, Peter Cartwright, who used the Washington's birthday address against Lincoln and even the charge of atheism, which had no worthy foundation, for Lincoln was profoundly religious, though he never united with any church. He said that whenever any church would inscribe over its altar as the only condition for membership the words of Jesus: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself;" he would join that church. Lincoln's life proved his sincerity in this statement.

Lincoln made a thorough campaign, watching most carefully all the many interests which can contribute to the success of a candidate, and was elected by an unusual majority. Moreover, he was the only Whig who secured a place in the Illinois delegation that year.

In 1847, when he took his seat in the thirtieth Congress, he saw there the last of the giants of the old days,—Webster, Calhoun, Clay and old John Quincy Adams, dying in his seat before the session ended. There were also Andrew Johnson, Alexander H. Stephens and David Wilmot. Douglas was there to take his new


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 long leap, one deep thrust of needle teeth meeting point to point in the throat, and the thing was done.

Suddenly all sense of fear vanished. Ears flattened, fangs gleaming, the lynx bunched his sinewy body for the spring.

Rusty, the red Irish terrier, was dreaming—dreaming of old days on the Sea Swallow with Mat Norman, of quiet voyages along the winding marsh creeks behind the barrier islands, of venturesome trips on the open ocean, when fair weather tempted the Sea Swallow's skipper to save time and distance by passing from inlet to inlet outside the island chain. Ona sudden the dream ended. Rusty stirred restlessly and opened his eyes. Slowly and feebly he raised his head and looked about him.

Around the arc of a half-circle his gaze swept a peaceful panorama of sea and sky and sloping, clean-swept strand. Then the movement of his head ceased, his body quivered, the short wiry hair of his nape and back stiffened and stood erect.

Wide, round, pale yellow eyes, stern and cruel as death, glared into his; eyes aglow with fierce fires of hate, yet hard and cold as jewels; eyes set in a broad, bearded face of implacable ferocity. As if by some compelling hypnotic power, they held Rusty spellbound and motionless; and, sudden and swift as the stab of a sword, fear entered Rusty's heart. For a fraction of time his life hung by a thread.

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 Rh seat in the Senate. The Mexican War was drawing to its close. The Whig party condemned the war as one that had been brought on simply to expand slave territory. Generals Taylor and Scott as well as many other prominent army officers were Whigs. This fact aided materially in justifying the Whig policy of denouncing the Democrats for entering into the war and at the same time voting adequate supplies for the prosecution of the war. Lincoln entered heartily into this party policy.

A few days after he had taken his seat in Congress he wrote back to Herndon a letter which closed humorously: "As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself I have concluded to do so before long." Accordingly, soon after he introduced a series of resolutions which became known as the "Spot Resolutions."

These resolutions referred to the President's message of May 11, 1846, in which the President expressed the reasons of the administration for beginning the war and said the Mexicans had "invaded our territory and shed the blood of our own citizens on our own soil." Lincoln quoted these lines and then asked the President to state the "exact spot" where these and other alleged occurrences had taken place. While these resolutions were never acted upon, they did afford him an opportunity to make a speech; and he made a good speech; not of the florid and fervid style that had characterized some of his early efforts; but a strong, logical speech that brought out the facts and made a favorable impression, thus saving him from being among the entirely unknown in the House.


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 The big lynx, poised and tense for the spring, would have launched himself forward instantly at the slightest sign of weakness, and the dog, faint and sick after his battle with the sea, must have perished almost without a struggle.

But Rusty Roustabout II was Irish terrier to the core. He was the son of kings. To Champion Breda Mixer his pedigree went back, and the blood in his veins was the pure blood of those little red dogs of North Ireland which long ago were dubbed "Dare-devils" by men who counted courage the cardinal virtue in dog or man. Only for a moment did cold terror chill his heart and paralyze his faculties. In an instant he threw it off and was himself again—the heedless, reckless, headlong little bravo whose delight in picking fights with dogs too big and heavy for him to handle was a constant source of pride and anxiety to his master whenever the Sea Swallow tied up at the city wharves to discharge or take on freight.

Perhaps it was the habit, characteristic of his breed, of striking first and considering consequences afterward which made him do what he now did. Perhaps some deep-seated instinct guided him; or possibly, in some mysterious way, he read a secret in those glassy savage eyes and knew on the instant that one thing and one thing only could save him. Be that as it may, he did that thing.

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 20 With reference to his future career a paragraph concerning Texas is here quoted. He says: "Any people, anywhere being inclined and having the power, have the right to raise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right,—a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to a case in which the whole people of an existing government choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." This political philosophy, so comfortably applied to Texas in 1846, is just what the Confederacy wished in 1861; and just exactly what Lincoln did not wish in 1861.

As Lincoln knew all along, his course concerning the war and the administration was displeasing some of his constituents; some of whom would rather be warlike than to be right, others honestly favored expansion. Like most of the other Whigs he had voted for the Ashmun amendment which said that the war had been "unnecessary and unconstitutionally commenced by the President." He learned that some of the people of Springfield would be displeased with an attitude that seemed to weaken the administration in a time of stress, but with Lincoln it was a matter of conscience and he met it fairly without evasion or any sort of coloring. And later when Douglas accused him of being unpatriotic he replied that he had not chosen to skulk, that he had voted for what he thought was the truth, and also reminded his


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 Summoning all his strength for the effort, he rose to his feet and with every hair abristle, short stubby tail erect as a flagpole, white teeth gleaming in long strong jaws, he stalked stiffly forward, then charged.

The wildcat, crouched for the leap, his brain on fire with the hate which for the moment had conquered his fear, shot forward and upward as though propelled by a catapult. Set on hair-trigger as he was, nothing could have stopped him; for an infinitesimal fraction of a second it seemed that Rusty's desperate attack had been launched too late. It had, indeed, come too late to forestall the cat's assault; but the terrier's swift and sudden advance cut in half the distance between the two antagonists, and the lynx's muscles had been keyed to drive his body forward that distance and not an inch less. So when he leaped he leaped too high and too far; and at the very instant when the terrier's legs gave way under him and he crumpled on the sand, the long tawny body of the cat flashed over him, one hind claw raking his head.

Slowly the dog, his forehead streaming with blood, struggled to his feet and faced about on tottering legs to meet the furious charge which he expected. Ten yards away across the sands he saw his foe racing with long bounds toward the green wall of jungle beyond the low sand hills of the upper beach. Once and once only the lynx looked

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 Rh hearers that he had always voted with the rest of the Whigs for the necessary supplies to carry on the war after it had been commenced. He would have liked renomination, but Judge Logan was nominated and was not elected.

He was on the electoral ticket and stumped New England and Illinois for Taylor, as soon as Congress adjourned. The New England speeches were full of moral earnestness. In Boston he heard Governor Seward speak and said: "I reckon you are right. We have got to deal with this slavery question and give more time to it hereafter than we have been giving." In December he went back to Washington for the second session and worked consistently for the Wilmot Proviso, designed to exclude slavery from territory acquired from Mexico. At this second session he voted against a bill to exclude slavery from the District of Columbia, because he did not like the form of the bill and then introduced a measure himself designed to serve the same purpose.

When his term as Congressman expired he sought but failed to obtain the position of Commissioner of the General Land Office. He was offered the position of Governor of the newly organized territory of Oregon, but this, due somewhat to the sensible advice of his wife, he declined. Then he went back to Springfield to practice law again, and to travel the muddy roads of the old Eighth Circuit, a somewhat disappointed and disillusioned man; but as ever the same sincere, kindly brother to all his fellow men.

During the years from 1850 to 1860 the tall


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Rh back; and Rusty, sitting on his haunches because once more his hind legs had given way, sent after him a bark of triumph and defiance.

This was the first meeting of Rusty, the little red Irish terrier, sometime member of the launch Sea Swallow's crew, and Longclaw, the big bay lynx, who for ten years or more had been king of all the preying beasts of the long narrow barrier island to which Rusty came by the grace of Providence when the Sea Swallow met her end. It was a strange whim of fate which brought the two together, for there was only one man who knew Longclaw the lynx and that one was Mat Norman, Rusty's master and god.

It was Norman who had given Longclaw his name. Woodsman as well as boatman, the Sea Swallow's skipper sometimes stopped at this island between the marshes and sea to spend a half day looking for sea-turtle nests in the sands, if the season was the season of turtles, or to wander in the dense woods of palmetto and pine, gnarled, stunted live oak and evergreen cassena, which covered the island's interior and in which many wild things had their homes. Several times on these trips Norman had noted the tracks of an unusually large wildcat, the largest wildcat tracks that he had ever seen. Be-

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 22 figure of Lincoln, garbed in black, continued to be familiar to the people of Springfield, as he strode along the street between his dingy law office on the square and his home on Eighth Street. He was clean in person and in dress, and diligent in his law practice, but he was not good at collecting what was coming to him; badly as he needed money in those days. He had finally paid off his debts, but the death of his father had left his devoted step-mother needing some help; and his shiftless stepbrother to be expostulated with in letters full of very kindly interest and wholesome advice.

He worked hard and was rapidly becoming known as an excellent lawyer. He made friends of the best men in the state, and they referred to him affectionately as "Honest Abe" or "Old Abe," but they always addressed him respectfully as "Mr. Lincoln." His humor, never peccant, was related to his brooding melancholy, and was designed to smooth out the little rough places in life, which he so well understood, with all its tragedies and tears. Men loved him, not alone for his stories, but for his simplicity of life, his genuine kindness, his utter lack of selfishness. There was a fascination about his personality. He seemed somehow mysterious and at the same time simple. In fact he was always trying to make ideas seem simple and clear, and told stories to accomplish that purpose. He tried to make the case clear to the jury, and the issues clear to his hearers. In all his life which had ever its heavy sorrows, these years were probably the


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 cause he delighted in studying the wild things, he always left Rusty on the launch when he landed on the island, for the terrier was of too restless and lively a temperament for patient watching in the woods; and because he had a habit of giving names to all the wild creatures with which he became acquainted, Norman dubbed the big bay lynx Longclaw and wove romantic fancies about the velvet-footed, mysterious haunter of the jungle glooms.

A creature of mystery he was, in truth; a ghostly, sinister, uncanny presence; a dim, elusive shape, seeming scarcely more tangible than the darkness through which he moved on feet that made no sound. To Norman he was the very spirit of the wild uncouth island forest, grotesque and inhospitable, bristling with needle-pointed yuccas and long-spined cactuses—a dense, almost impenetrable, palm-shadowed jungle, utterly unlike the beautiful woods of the Low Country mainland, yet alluring with an outlandish tropical enchantment of its own. Norman, on his visits to this fastness, searched often for the big lynx, but not in order to harm him. His tracks in the sand gave the man a thrill of joy whenever he came upon them; and the island wilderness was all the more fascinating, all the more alluring, because somewhere in its hidden depths lurked this secretive spectral follower of the night trails.

In spite of all his seeking and watching, Norman

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 Rh brightest for him. He enjoyed the confidence of his people and the devotion of his friends. His fellow men of whatever degree in life, judge, lawyers, witnesses, jurors, litigants, all gathered affectionately around him to hear him talk and to tell stories. But he was not a mere story teller. His conversation was such as to draw men to him for its very worth. He was fundamentally serious, dignified, and never given to uncouth familiarities.

Though so notably kind, so deeply sympathetic, and at times so given to humor, when he was aroused he was terrible in his firmness, his resolution to win for the cause that was right, his stern rebuke for injustice, his merciless excoriation of falsehood and his relentless determination to see the truth prevail. False or careless witnesses dreaded his cross-examinations, and his opponents dreaded his effectiveness in handling a case before a jury.

Though he was called homely, there was a commanding dignity about his presence; his appearance inspired confidence; and when in the heat and passion of forensic effort, his features lighted up with a strange and compelling beauty and attractiveness. He was never petty, never quibbled and never tried to gain an unfair advantage or even use an unworthy means of attaining a worthy end. Consequently courts and juries believed what he said. He was a poor lawyer when on the wrong side of the case, and would not take a bad case if he knew it. Upon one occasion, when, in the very midst of a trial, he discovered that his client had acted fraudulently, he left the courtroom and when the


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 58 The women grumblingly obeyed, and he stooped down to examine his patient.

“When did this happen, Jenny?”

“Last night, sir.”

“Why didn’t you send before?”

“We did send to one here in the village, but he wouldn’t come, because she belonged to the circus. He sent her this,” handing him a paper.

“Umph! ‘The World and its Amusements on the Broad Way.’ Just like that sanctimonious Jennings. Sends the woman a tract, and lets her suffer all day long.”

“Doctor,” said the sick woman, “how long can I live.”

“Live, woman! why, you’re good for another forty years yet.”

“No, doctor, I’m not—I feel I’m not long for this world.”

“Oh! all nonsense!” said he, “you’ll soon get over this.” And with like comforting assurances he sought to raise her from her depressed condition. In about ten minutes he went to the door and said, “Come in here, one of you, while I go to the gig.” He soon came back, and the woman remained with him.

In a little while the Clown came up to the group of women outside the door, and leaning in all attitudes against the sides and steps of the waggon.

“Well, has he come?”

“Yes, he has been in this quarter of an hour.”

“What does he say?”

“‘Oh! she’ll do,’ he says, didn’t he?” said one of them, turning to another for conﬁrmation.

He soon left, and his voice was heard shouting some old witticism of the ring as though there were no such things as sick wives and doctors in the world. In a few minutes more he came again quite out of breath from a last somersault, the approbation of which was still heard. Seeing the door partially open he entered, and his face looked joyous, as the wail of a child greeted him.

“Which is it? A boy?”

“Yes,” said Jenny.

The answer was unheard by him, for there stretched out in death—lay the mother. Contrary to the doctor’s expectation the accident and premature delivery had caused her death.

Yes! There she lay; the hollow sunken eyes—made unnaturally bright by the traces of rouge upon her cheeks—the jaw fallen. Death was evidently there and he saw it. She with whom he had hoped to share all the cares and joys of life; now that the only difference they had ever had was removed. She was dead! The man seemed stunned. A strange pair they looked;—he in the motley and paint of his calling; she—dead!

“Bear up, Bill,” said Jenny, approaching him with the child; “it’s a boy, Bill; and she wanted it to be called after you.”

The man seemed not to hear, but, walking up to the bed, and taking one of the dead hands in his, kissed it gently, as though afraid of waking her; and then, as though his loss had just been realised, muttered, “Dead! dead!” and lay down, his face close to hers, kissing the fast cooling lips with frantic earnestness. “Dead—dead—dead!” still came between his choking sobs. To him the women, moving to and fro in offices about the child, were not: to him, useless was the doctor’s farewell. “Dead—dead—dead!” and the heaving chest and bursting eyeballs found relief in tears.

“There, don’t take on so, Bill!” said one, trying to raise him; “don’t take on so hard, Bill!”

She might as well have spoken to the box on which he half sat, half leaned, as he hung over his dead wife. They then tried to get to close the staring eyes; but a look which appalled them shook their nerves too much to allow of a second trial. A noise outside now attracted them to the door.

“What’s the matter, now?”

“Matter, enough!” said a harsh, grating voice. “Here’s Chapman so drunk he can’t go in, and Bill’s skulking because his wife’s sick; there never was a fellow in the ring worse treated than I am.”

“She is dead, Whips,” said one, pointing with her thumb back to the waggon.

“Dead!” said he.

“Yes; and he’s there, too.”

“Well, if that ain’t too had,” said he: “here’s the last scene before the quadrille, and no clown—it’ll ruin the circus. The second night, too; her last night’s jump has filled the place—there ain’t standing room—and they’ve been calling for her all the evening. Dead,” said he again, as though his loss were caused by her neglect. “Who’d have thought it? What’s to be done?”

“Can’t you make Chapman do?”

“No, he’s a fool any time to Bill, and now he’s drunk he’s no use at all. What’s to be done? I don’t know.”

Here he was obliged to leave, for the uproar in the circus was deafening. “Clown! Clown!” was the only cry they would make. In vain did Whips drive the horses faster and faster, till the “Corsican Brothers” were nearly in a horizontal position with their speed; nothing would appease the now excited people.

Whips came out again. “Where’s Bill?” said he.

“Here, Bill,” said Jenny, “Whips wants you.”

“Who wants me?” said the man.

“Here, Bill, I do,” said the voice at the door.

Jenny gave the child to one of the women, took him by the arm, and led him to the door.

“Bill,” said Whips, “here’s Chapman as drunk as a beast, and the people crying out for you like mad. Can’t you go?”

“Go!” said he, pointing to the body. “How can I go? No, I can’t go.”

“Well, Bill, you must; it’s only the second night, here’s the queen away and no clown.”

“Well, there’s only the Indian warrior to go in,” said Bill.

“Well, I know that, but what’s the good of him without somebody to give him his things? What’s the good of my giving him his club and bow, or the paddle either? No, Bill, you must go: it won’t do to send in any one else now, they’d pull the place down.”

Here another and louder cry reached them.

“There now,” said Whips, “that’s it; there’s the ‘Corsican Brothers’ has been agoing round this quarter of an hour, till they’re sick of it, and

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 saw the lynx but once, and then only for an instant. But a time came when Rusty, the Irish terrier, might have told his master much about the great wildcat Longclaw, into whose domain the storm had flung the little red dog to wage a long war with the jungle's tawny mysterious lord. Meanwhile, however, weeks and months were to pass—weeks and months during which Rusty, the castaway, learned to live the new life to which fate had assigned him.

It was a slow process, that learning; yet even at the beginning, Rusty's wits met the first and most important test—the problem of sustenance. Twenty yards from the spot where the dog had been washed ashore, a white-and-gray bird dropped down to the sand on quivering pointed wings and presently ran on long slender legs to a tall clump of beach grass well above high-tide mark. Soon came another and another, while overhead still others circled and called, "Pill-will-willet, pill-will-willet, pill-will-willet." For a half hour after the lynx had disappeared Rusty lay still, exhausted by the brief exertion of that encounter; but after a while strength returned to him and he got to his feet and walked slowly up the beach. Accident rather than design turned his steps toward the grassy area where the willets nested, and one by one they rose before him to fly low over his head, crying and swooping.

He gave them no heed, not knowing the reason

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 24 judge sent for him, he sent word back that he "had gone to wash his hands." He had too much human sympathy to be the most effective prosecutor unless there was a clear case of Justice on his side; and he was too sympathetic to make money—for his charges were so small that Herndon and the other lawyers and even the judge expostulated with him. Though his name appears in the Illinois Reports in one hundred and seventy-three cases,—a record giving him first rank among the lawyers of the state, his income was probably not much over two or three thousand a year. And he was engaged in some of the most important cases in the state, such as Illinois Central Railroad Company v. The County of McLean, in which he was retained by the railroad and successfully prevented the taxation of land ceded to the railroad by the State,—and then had to sue to recover his modest fee of five thousand, which was the largest he ever received. In the McCormick reaper patent litigation he was engaged with Edwin M. Stanton, who treated him with discourtesy in the Federal Court at Cincinnati, called him "that giraffe," and prevented him from delivering the argument which he had so carefully and solicitously prepared. Such an experience was, of course, very painful to his sensitive nature, and it shows how great he was that he could forgive the injury entirely as he did later when he appointed Stanton as his Secretary of War, despite the protest of friends who recalled it all to him.

In one of his most notable murder cases he defended William or "Duff" Armstrong, the son


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 for their excitement; but suddenly, as he brushed past a grass clump, something crunched under his forefoot. He had stepped squarely into a willet's nest and had broken two of the buffy, brown-blotched eggs. He ate these ravenously, then broke the two other eggs in the nest and ate them also. Conscious for the first time of his hunger, he nosed about from grass clump to grass clump and found five other nests, each containing eggs, all of which he devoured. Then, suddenly aware of a thirst which exceeded even his hunger, he pushed on across the belt of loose sand between the beach and the jungle's edge.

Luck favored him in his quest. A hundred feet within the dense wall of cassena and myrtle fringing the woods, a chain of ponds and pools extended for a quarter of a mile lengthwise of the island, fed either by rains or by obscure springs hidden amid rank reeds and rushes. As Rusty splashed along the slime-covered margin of one of these pools toward a little cove where the water growths fell away, a great milk-white bird, half as tall as a tall man, startled him as it rose with labored wing beats not more than half a dozen feet in front of him. He drank and drank and drank; then irresistible weariness came over him again and, making his way to a dry spot close to a palmetto trunk, he lay down and slept for hours.

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 Rh of his old friend, Jack Armstrong. It was a desperate case for William and for his mother Hannah, who had also been a warm friend to Lincoln when he was young. The youth was one of the wildest of the Clary's Grove boys, and a prosecuting witness told how, by the light of the moon, he saw the blow struck. Lincoln subjected the witness to one of his dreadful cross-examinations and then confronted him with the almanac of the year in which the crime was committed to show that the moon had set at the hour at which the witness claimed to have seen the blow struck by Armstrong. The boy was acquitted and Lincoln would accept no fee but the tears and gratitude of his old friends.

Another interesting case was one in which a principal witness was the aged Peter Cartright who had more than ten years before waged a campaign against Lincoln for Congress. Cartright was the grandfather of "Peachy" Harrison who was charged with the murder of Greek Crafton. It was a dramatic moment when the old Methodist minister took the stand in front of Lincoln, and as his white head bowed, Lincoln had him tell how, as Greek Crafton lay dying, among his last words were "I want you to say to the man who killed me that I forgive him." After such a dying declaration and such a scene Lincoln was sure to make a speech that would move the hearts of any jury with pity and forgiveness such as he himself always felt for all souls in trouble; and Harrison was acquitted. It was such experiences at the bar that made him the great lawyer that he was;


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 When he awoke dusk had come to the jungle. Where scrubby, stunted live oaks spread their wide branches under the pines it was already black night; and all around him in the gloom the little red dog heard sibilant, mysterious whisperings—the eerie music of the sea winds sifting through acres of palmetto fronds. A chuck-will's-widow cried shrilly in the blackness, another and another answered. Down from the air above the feathery pine tops floated the loud, guttural "quok-quok-quok" of a squadron of black-crowned night herons going forth to their fishing, and presently a homing blue heron sent down his harsh, hoarse call.

Then, as the breeze lulled, fell silence, deep and absolute; and in the grim clutch of it, with the blackness growing ever blacker, fear came into Rusty's heart again—fear and a great longing for Mat Norman, his master.

The longing abode with him, but the fear passed. It was not in his nature to be afraid; and the hunger, which the willet eggs had only temporarily appeased, would not let him lie idle in the darkness, appalled by the jungle's dreadful silences, startled by its inexplicable sounds. Soon his nose gave him tidings which made him forget all other matters in a new quest for food—a quest to which he could bring a ripe experience.

His nose told him—that there were rabbits about

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 26 and the great advocate of whatever he believed to be right; and prepared him to win the great cause of humanity before the whole people of the nation and of the world.

In 1852 Lincoln campaigned for Scott. In 1854 he seemed to be losing interest in politics when the news of the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise aroused him. This had been brought about by Douglas, the new leader of the Democrats, then one of the most influential men in Congress, and after the days of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, one of the foremost politicians in America. Douglas came back to Illinois to find many of his constituents in the North displeased with what they thought he had done to please the Democrats of the South. They thought that he was sacrificing the ideal of limiting slavery in order to advance his ambitions to become President. He set about to win back his state. He spoke in Springfield; and a few days later, Lincoln replied in a speech that delighted his friends and convinced them that in him they had a champion afire with enthusiasm for the cause of freedom.

Somewhat against his will he was nominated and elected to the legislature in the fall of 1854, but when he saw the dissatisfaction in the Democratic party he was encouraged to resign from the legislature and become a candidate for the United States Senate. The Democrats, though not in perfect harmony, had a majority, and he could not be elected, but helped to turn the tide for the revolting faction of the Democrats. Though disappointed he knew that the struggle was only begun.


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 and Rusty was an old hand at rabbit hunting. It mattered little that these dwellers in the jungle morasses were short-legged, dark-tailed marsh rabbits and not the cottontails with which he was familiar. Indeed, it was fortunate for him that this was the case, for these marsh rabbits lacked both the wit and the speed of the cottontail. He bungled his first attempt, but the game was plentiful and a quarter of an hour later he had another chance. This time he stalked his prey more skillfully and soon had a supper suited to his needs.

Thus, at the very outset, Rusty solved the primary problem—the problem of food. If there had been nothing else, the sea birds' eggs on the sands—eggs of willet and plover, tern and skimmer—and the sluggish water-loving hares of the island pondedges would have kept him alive for weeks. But there were many other sources of food supply besides these; and little by little—sometimes by accident, sometimes by virtue of his keen nose and sharp wits—the terrier gained knowledge of them and skill in turning them to good account.

Walking the beach one moonlight night, he came upon a raccoon busily digging in the sand twenty feet or so above high-water mark. He tried to stalk the coon, but the latter saw him and, after debating the question for a moment, decided upon flight. Rusty treed him in a young live oak just within the

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 Rh The nation was aroused over the question of slavery. While many good people desired peace rather than agitation concerning such an irritating problem, the question of slavery in the territories had to be decided and the whole question of slavery would not down. In 1856 the Republican party was organized for the state of Illinois in a big convention at Bloomington at which Lincoln made a strong speech; and in the Republican National Convention held in Philadelphia a few weeks later he was given 110 votes for Vice-President. He was committed to the new Republican party and campaigned vigorously for Fremont, their candidate for President.

Lincoln's enthusiastic friends said he was already on the track for the Presidency. As the contest of 1858 for the Senate approached, it again appeared that the Democrats would be divided and Lincoln had some confidence of success. Out in Kansas the proslavery men, by an unfair vote, had adopted the Lecompton Constitution favoring slavery; President Buchanan urged Congress to admit Kansas with that fraudulent constitution; Douglas opposed that constitution and voted against the admission of Kansas as a slave state; thus angering the President and the South and delighting the Republicans of the North.

Now the time was approaching when, in the 1859 session of the Illinois legislature, Douglas would have to stand for re-election to the United States Senate. The legislators would be chosen in the campaign of 1858 largely on that issue. Douglas had become the foremost


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 edge of the jungle, then lost him as he made off along an aerial pathway passing from tree to tree. Returning to the spot where the coon had been digging, the terrier took up the work of excavation and in a few minutes unearthed a store of round white eggs, more than a hundred and fifty in all, arranged in layers in a deep cavity in the sand.

He did not know that they were the eggs of a great sea turtle which had come up out of the surf earlier that night and, after lumbering across the beach and laboriously digging a hole in the sand with her flippers, had deposited her treasures therein, covered them up and waddled ponderously back to the ocean. But Rusty found that these eggs were exceedingly good to eat and, tearing open their tough skins with his teeth, he devoured more than a score of them at one sitting.

The discovery of this nest was a stroke of luck, but by using his wits Rusty improved upon it. He had noted the wide, plainly marked trail or crawl leading from the surf to the turtle nest and back to the surf again; and several times that spring and summer he found turtle nests for himself by digging in the sand where an upward trail and a downward trail came together above reach of the tides.

In these and various other ways the little red dog made his living during the first weeks of his long

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 28 man in the Democratic party, and any man who could beat him would have national recognition. The Republicans of Illinois nominated Lincoln, who challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates.

The famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates are full of interest and repay a full and careful study, but they will be treated very briefly in this volume.

Lincoln entered upon these debates in a lofty spirit and to the end pursued a high course, fraught with kindness, fairness, magnanimity and most commendable dignity. He said, "While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim, in this contest, to be actuated by something higher than anxiety for office," and apparently he was.

Lincoln looked into the future and foresaw the coming campaign of 1860 for the Presidency. He foresaw that Douglas would be the leader of the Democrats in that campaign and conducted the debate accordingly.

Lincoln thought not alone of momentary issues, but also of eternal verities. Some things which his friends wished him not to say, for fear it would lose him votes, he said, because they were things that were true and ought to be said: for example, "This nation cannot endure half slave and half free … A house divided against itself cannot stand. … I do not expect the house to fall. … I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do expect it to cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the


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 exile. At first he searched often and hopefully for his master, but little by little he realized that his search was vain. Slowly, too, realization came to him that he was a prisoner. On one side of his island lay the sea, on the other a wilderness of salt marsh, boggy and treacherous, an impassable barrier which Rusty tried only once to cross. A house, where an oyster planter had once lived, now stood deserted and desolate, half wrecked by a terrific hurricane. Rusty's ordeal in the storm had filled him with an enduring horror of the surf. For this reason he avoided the front beach as a rule and made no attempt to swim the deep inlet separating his barrier isle from the next island of the chain. But for his fear of the breakers his exile might have been shorter, for fishermen sometimes landed on the island and walked the front beach. But none of these rare human visitors entered the hot, almost impenetrable jungle behind the dunes, teeming with insects in the warm season and inhabited by many snakes.

The heat and the insects Rusty endured as best he could. Deep-seated instinct kept him safe from the ugly, thick-bodied, truculent moccasins. As time passed he grew wiser in the ways of the woods, stronger of body, keener of nose, fleeter of foot. With the advancing summer the sea birds' eggs became fewer and no more turtle trails crossed the

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 Rh further spread of it and place it where in the public mind it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it until it will become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South." While such utterances probably did cost him votes at the time, later his people could see that his prophetic vision had been right and their confidence in him, always strong, was accordingly increased.

Lincoln, with the training of the lawyer, the wily cross-examiner, the profound jurist, the farsighted statesman, forced Douglas into a dilemma between the northern Democrats of Illinois and the southern Democrats of the slave states. Lincoln was warned by his friends that Douglas would probably choose to please the Democrats of Illinois and be elected United States Senator; but Lincoln replied to his friends: "I am after larger game: the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this." Time proved that Lincoln was right. While Lincoln's friends guessed wisely as to the prediction that Douglas would choose to secure the Senatorship by pleasing the Democrats of Illinois, many of whom were opposed to slavery, Lincoln was wise in his prediction concerning the effect on the campaign of 1860 for President.

For example, one of the questions Lincoln asked was: "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?" If Douglas should answer, "No," he would alienate Illinois; and


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 sands. But Rusty was so good a hunter now, so well versed in the essential arts of island life, that though he occasionally encountered lean periods when hunger almost drove him to raid the vast armies of the little fiddler crabs, these intervals of ill luck were of short duration. The marsh rabbits were his main reliance, both because of their great abundance and because they were comparatively easily caught; but he varied his fare often enough to escape monotony.

Wood rats were an important source of food supply. Now and again he caught a cottontail. Several times he feasted on minks which abounded in the salt marshes behind the island. With surprising frequency he captured squirrels by taking advantage of their uncontrollable curiosity. The raccoons, however, which he often scented and not infrequently saw, were too much for him. Try as he would, he could not get to close quarters with them—which was, perhaps, just as well. Some of the island coons were fully as big as he was, and, had he managed to close with them, they might have taught him a lesson. More than one big male ringtail seemed half inclined to accept his challenge. But on each of these occasions there happened to be a tree close at hand, and at the last moment the coon, perhaps impressed by the impetuousness of Rusty's attack, decided to avoid the issue.

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 30 if he should answer "Yes," he would alienate the South. In a remarkably adroit manner Douglas answered, "Yes," and delighted his friends in Illinois; but later the effect in the South was clearly against him.

In the United States Senate Douglas had proved a match for the best debaters in the land, but he remarked after his series of debates with Lincoln that in all his sixteen years in the Senate he had not met one whom he would not rather encounter than Lincoln.

To the very end of the debate Lincoln kept the argument pitched on a very high plane of dignified logical search for clear truth; which was something unusual in political contests. He kept referring to such ideas as, "Is slavery right or wrong?" "It is the eternal struggle between right and wrong." Lincoln was pleading for humanity.

The debates were continued in seven of the largest cities of the states, and between the joint engagements the protagonists were speaking daily under circumstances of great strain. The prestige of being a Senator gave to Douglas comforts of travel not always accorded to Lincoln and at the end of the campaign he was worn out. When the election was over the popular vote was very close, but the members of the legislature gave Douglas a majority and he was returned to the Senate. But the campaign split the Democratic party and made Lincoln a national figure.

Lincoln, tired and disappointed and financially embarrassed by his personal expenses, could still cheer his friends with a joke. He


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 There was one other island dweller whom Rusty scented sometimes, but for a long while never saw save only that once when he was so near to death—Longclaw, the big bay lynx, whose overlordship even the surliest of the old he-coons grudgingly admitted. Sometimes the red dog knew that his fierceeyed, stealthy enemy was near; sometimes he saw the wildcat's rounded tracks; occasionally the wind brought him a scent which he recognized at once. But though Rusty often followed those tracks and sought to trace that well-remembered scent, for weeks it was Longclaw who hunted Rusty and not Rusty who hunted Longclaw.

An irresistible fascination drove the lynx to shadow the little dog, to trail him wherever he went about the island, to keep him almost constantly under observation. Early in this strange game Longclaw realized that, in spite of its doglike smell, the small, stump-tailed, rough-coated beast which had suddenly appeared upon the island was nothing like so formidable as the big gaunt hounds which the lynx feared even more than he hated them. The little red dog's woodcraft was no match for that of Longclaw. He was a tyro, a bungler, whom the lynx could easily elude; and, bold though he was, he was of insignificant stature compared with the hunting dogs that Longclaw dreaded. Three times during those first weeks the big wildcat, discovering Rusty

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 Rh said, "I am like the boy that stumped his toe—it hurt too bad to laugh, but he was too big to cry." He added, "However, I am glad I made the race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age which I could have had in no other way; and though I shall now sink from view and be forgotten, I believe that I have made some marks for the cause of civil liberty which will endure long after I am gone."

But he was not to be forgotten. He received congratulations from all parts of the nation. He got many calls to come and speak in the largest cities, most of which he declined, because he must return to his law practice and earn some money. However, when Douglas appeared in the Gubernatorial contest in Ohio, the temptation was too great, and he accepted calls to reply in Columbus and Cincinnati before very large audiences. He also accepted a call to speak in Cooper Union Institute in New York City, where he delivered a notable speech before a large and distinguished audience presided over by William Cullen Bryant. Lincoln says that he felt uncomfortable and "imagined that the audience noticed the contrast between his western clothes and the neat fitting suits of Mr. Bryant and others who sat on the platform." He spoke with great earnestness, and the next day in the Tribune, Horace Greeley said: "No other man ever made such an impression in his first appeal to a New York audience." From New York he went on a speaking trip through New England where he made a deep impression. He went home with


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 asleep, crept almost within leaping distance of him; and once he had all but nerved himself for the attack when the terrier awoke.

But gradually there came a change. More and more often Rusty caught the scent of Longclaw; more and more often he turned aside to follow that scent; more and more often and more and more quickly he forced his velvet-footed, ghostly attendant to beat a hasty retreat. The little dog was learning woodcraft; his nose, his eyes and his ears were serving him better; experience was teaching him the ways and the stratagems of the wild folk of the woods.

A time came when the grim game of hide and seek was no longer a ludicrously unequal contest between a novice and a master. Still, the advantage rested with Longclaw, but he could not now venture to take liberties which formerly involved no risk. At last one day Rusty worked out a scent so quickly that he caught a glimpse of his foe; and a week later he not only saw the lynx again but actually treed him in a small isolated cedar and kept him there for an hour.

This marked the beginning of a new chapter. Thenceforward Rusty was no longer content to leave the initiative with his enemy. Whether he realized in some strange way that the contest between the lynx and himself had to be fought out

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 32 a national reputation. The strange story of his early life appealed to the masses of the people of the North; he was the subject of conversation and of inquiry. A friend sought data for a biography.

He said, "I admit that I am ambitious and that I would like to be President. I am not insensible to the compliment that you pay me and the interest that you manifest in the matter, but there is no such good luck in store for me as the Presidency of the United States. Besides, there is nothing in my early history that would interest you or anybody else." He also added, "I do not think that I am fitted for the Presidency"; and that, "men like Seward and Chase were entitled to take precedence." But the editor of the Central Illinois Gazette brought him out and after that the movement spread strongly.

Such friends as Davis, Sweet, Logan and Palmer and also his faithful partner, Herndon, continued to urge him to become an active candidate. He finally consented and became busy at the work of marshalling the support of his friends. He used all his well-known skill as a politician to forward his campaign, though nothing derogatory is to be inferred from these words concerning his methods, which were entirely honorable. He wrote a friend: "I am not in a position where it would hurt me much not to be nominated on the national ticket; but it would hurt me not to get the Illinois delegation … can you help me a little in this matter at your end of the vineyard?" The allegiance of his own state


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 to a conclusion, or whether he found in the excitement of that contest relief from his gnawing loneliness and his poignant longing for his master, the pursuit of Longclaw became his principal business in life next to the finding of food. He trailed the big wildcat in his sleep, fought with him in his dreams; and once, having driven him to take refuge in one of his dens, a leaning oak, hollow for a distance of twenty feet above the ground, Rusty stood guard within the entrance of the hollow for more than five hours before thirst finally compelled him to abandon his vigil.

Summer reached and passed its zenith. In the fierce August heats, when even the languid herons and the tall black-and-white wood ibises of the island ponds and meres seemed to droop and suffer, Rusty rested perforce. It was a struggle then to keep alive, to endure without madness the incessant attacks of the stinging and biting insects from which, when the breeze dropped, escape was all but impossible. Yet morning and evening often found the terrier on the trail again; and with brief interludes the long duel of wits and of nerve between dog and lynx, between the alien invader of the jungle and the big wildcat who had been the jungle's sovereign, continued and became more bitter and more deadly. It was an odd chance which brought the climax.

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 Rh was soon assured. At Decatur, May 9 and 10, 1860, the Republican state convention met in the big Wigwam, and Governor Oglesby, who presided, said, "A distinguished citizen whom Illinois is delighted to honor is present and should be invited to a place on the platform." Amid tumultuous applause Lincoln was lifted over the heads of the crowd to the platform. At that moment John Hanks theatrically entered bearing a couple of old fence rails and a flag and a placard on the rails, "Made in Sangamon bottom in 1830 by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks." Again there was a sympathetic uproar and Lincoln made a speech appropriate for the occasion. When the tumult subsided the convention resolved that "Abraham Lincoln is the first choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the Presidency and their delegates are instructed to use every honorable means to secure his nomination, and to cast the vote of the state as a unit for him."

One week later, May 16, the national Republican convention met at Chicago in the "Wigwam," which had been built to hold ten thousand persons. Lincoln's friends, Davis, Judd, Palmer, Swett, Oglesby, were there working "like nailers," night and day without sleep. The candidates were Seward of New York, Lincoln of Illinois, Cameron of Pennsylvania, Chase of Ohio, Bates of Missouri; and others of less note. Seward's friends hoped, as Lincoln's friends dreaded, that Seward might be nominated by a rush on the first ballot. Lincoln's followers, contrary to his wishes, made a "necessary arrangement" with Cameron of