"I've been thinking of your friendly question. It's dangerous to talk that way to a man like me. The fact is I need two hundred dollars to pay pressing debts and give me something in my pocket when I go to Vandalia. If you can not lend it to me I shall think none the less of you." "I can and will," said Smoot. "I've been watching you for a long time. A man who tries as hard as you do to get along deserves to be helped. I believe in you. I'll go up to Springfield and get the money and bring it to you within a week or so." Abe Lincoln had many friends who would have done the like for him if they could, and he knew it. "Every one has faith in you," said Smoot. "We expect much of you and we ought to be willing to do what we can to help." "Your faith will be my strength if I have any," said Abe. On his way home that night he thought of what Jack Kelso had said of democracy and friendship. On the twenty-second of November a letter came to Ann from Bim Kelso which announced that she was going to New Orleans for the winter with her husband. Thereupon Abe gave up the idea of going to St. Louis and six days later took the stage for the capital, at Rutledge's door, where all the inhabitants of the village had assembled to bid him good-by. Ann Rutledge with a flash of her old playfulness kissed him when he got into the stage. Abe's long arm was waving in the air as he looked back at his cheering friends while the stage rumbled down the road toward the great task of his life upon which he was presently to begin in the little village of Vandalia. CHAPTER XIII WHEREIN THE ROUTE OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IS SURVEYED AND SAMSON AND HARRY SPEND A NIGHT IN THE HOME OF HENRY BRIMSTEAD AND HEAR SURPRISING REVELATIONS, CONFIDENTIALLY DISCLOSED, AND ARE CHARMED BY THE PERSONALITY OF HIS DAUGHTER ANNABEL. Early in the autumn of that year the Reverend Elijah Lovejoy of Alton had spent a night with the Traylors on his way to the North. Sitting by the fireside he had told many a vivid tale of the cruelties of slavery. "I would not have you think that all slave-holders are wicked and heartless," he said. "They are like other men the world over. Some are kind and indulgent. If all men were like them, slavery could be tolerated. But they are not. Some men are brutal in the North as well as in the South. If not made so by nature they are made so by drink. To give them the power of life and death over human beings, which they seem to have in parts of the South, is a crime against God and civilization. Our country can not live and prosper with such a serpent in its bosom. No good man should rest until the serpent is slain." "I agree with you," said Samson.