Mr. Lincoln noticed the hesitancy in the last words, the change in the tone, the touch of sadness. He inferred at once that what Senator Morton had told him of this man's loyalty had had something to do with his leaving the old home. "Found it healthier for you to go West, did you? Traveled toward the setting sun. Wanted to keep in the daylight as long as you could; but I see you took the memory of the dear old home with you. Have you never been back?" "I don't look like much of an outlaw, do I, Mr. Lincoln?" asked Griffith, with a sad smile. "Can't say I would take you for one, no." The President turned a full, long, searching look upon him. "Well, I have never been back--home--I--I left two freed slaves in the State when I came away, and, you know----" Mr. Lincoln laughed for the first time aloud. "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! You remind me of a case we had out in Illinois. There was an old fellow laying to stock a pond he had with fish. Well, that pond was so close to town and so handy, that the boys--some of 'em about as old as you and me--caught 'em out as fast as he put 'em in. By and by his son got into the Legislature, and one day when there wasn't a great deal of other law to make or to spoil, he got the other members to vote for a bill to punish anybody for taking anything out of that pond. His bill said, 'for fishing anything out of that pond.' Well, one day a little son of his fell in and got so far from shore before they saw him that they had to literally fish him out with a pole. Some of the fishermen around there wanted him arrested for violation of the law he had passed to hit them.--Fact! He and you are about the same sort of criminals." He turned to the map again. "Of course I understand what you mean. Yes, yes, I know. These very passes and fords are dear to you. Some people have that sort of attachments. I have. Why, I'd feel like getting down off o' my horse at many a place out on my old circuit and just making love to the very earth beneath my feet! O, I know how you feel! These old fords are old friends. As you rode along at another place, certain thoughts came to you, and kept you company for miles. They would come back to you right there again. Right over there was a sorrowful memory. You knew the birds that nested in this defile, and you stopped and put the little fellows back in the nest when they had fallen out--and they were not afraid of you. I know how that is. They never were afraid of me--none but the yellow-legged chickens." He smiled in his quizzical way. He was still testing and studying his guest, while keeping him off his guard, and making him forget the President in his relations with the man. Griffith had begun to wonder how he could know about those birds and woodland friends of long ago, but the yellow-legged chicken joke was so familiar to the preacher that he smiled absently, as in duty bound.