"We've talked it over.

If you want to, you can come along with us and our home shall be yours and I'll do what's right by you." They fared along through Indiana and over the wide savannas of Illinois, and on the ninety-seventh day of their journey they drove through rolling, grassy, flowering prairies and up a long, hard hill to the small log cabin settlement of New Salem, Illinois, on the shore of the Sangamon.

They halted about noon in the middle of this little prairie village, opposite a small clapboarded house.

A sign hung over its door which bore the rudely lettered words: "Rutledge's Tavern." A long, slim, stoop-shouldered young man sat in the shade of an oak tree that stood near a corner of the tavern, with a number of children playing around him.

He had sat leaning against the tree trunk reading a book.