It was such a night of wind and darkness and snow, as used to cause dwellers in pioneer cabins, isolated from neighbours at all times, but now swirled about, shut in, and cut off other from human life by the tempest, to pile the big fireplace with dry cord-wood, banking it up against the huge back-log, and draw close together around the hearth, to watch the flames roar up the chimney. There would be hot mulled cider to drink, comforting things to eat, and cheerful talk. Lincoln was restless and uneasy in his shadowy corner. His eyes burned with excitement. When he got up and wandered about the room William followed him, fearing he might do himself harm. He went to the door, at last, threw it open and looked out into the wild night. Turning back suddenly, his hands clenched above his head, he cried out in utter desolation: “I cannot bear to think of her out there alone, in the cold and darkness and storm.” The ice of his frozen heart was unlocked at last, and his reason saved. But there were months of bitter grief and despair that wore him out physically. His fits of melancholy returned, a confirmed trait that he never lost. In time he went back to his old occupations, bearing himself simply, doing his duty as a man and a citizen. His intellect was keener, his humour kindlier; to his sympathy was added the element of compassion. And on his face--in his eyes and on his mouth--was fixed the expression that marks him as our man of sorrows deep and irremediable. Until he went away to Springfield a year later to practise law, he disappeared at times. Everyone knew he was with Ann, sitting for hours by the grassy mound that covered her. Once he said to William G. Greene: “My heart is buried in the grave with that dear girl.” The place was in a grove of forest trees on the prairie at that time, but afterward the trees were cut down or neglected, and it became choked with weeds and brambles--one of those forlorn country burying-grounds that marked the passing of many pioneer settlements. For in 1840 New Salem was abandoned. The year after Ann Rutledge died, Lincoln surveyed and platted the city of Petersburg, two miles farther north on the river. A steam mill built there drew all the country patronage. Most of the people of New Salem moved their houses and shops over to the new town, but the big tavern stood until it fell and the logs were hauled away for firewood. The dam was washed out by floods, the mill burned. To-day, the bluff on which the town stood has gone back to the wild, and the site is known as Old Salem on the Hill.