Weeks went by, and there was no letter from the absent McNeill. Ann wrote often herself, tying the missives in wrapping paper with stout string, sealing them securely, and giving them to Lincoln to mail. Cheerful at first, her face grew wistful, her colour fled, her singing voice fell silent. Too loyal to suspect, too proud to complain, what fears possessed the lonely watches of the night, what hope awoke with each dawn, those who loved her best could only dimly guess. Her head held high in the pride of a faith unshaken, she asked for her letter only with a look, but such a look as one could scarce endure and the heart must ache to deny. Afterward she said she thought of her lover as dead. Steamboats often blew up in those days; there were swamps along the Wabash and the Ohio where men died of malarial fever; there were treacherous places in the mountains where a stumbling horse could end, in unrecorded tragedy, the sweetest human drama. In her heart she set up a shrine to a consecrated memory. For the one blow fate held for her she was unprepared. In early summer there was a letter. Lincoln must have leaped on the nearest saddled horse and galloped out to the farm to give it to her. He slipped it into her hand unseen, saw the happy colour flood her face, and watched her speed away to the riverbank to read it. It was evening when she crept home again, in the radiance of the harvest moon, across the stubble of the wheat, like a dazed ghost. It was not a letter that Ann could speak of to her father and mother with confidence and pride. McNeill had been ill on the journey--not so ill, however, that he could not have written. And his name was not McNeill, but McNamar. Family misfortunes had caused him to change his name out West so dependent relatives could not find him, thus giving the lie to his excuse for going back. He said nothing about returning, showed no remorse for his neglect, did not speak of her tender letters to him. Perhaps, in the old home, he had not cared to claim them under the name by which she knew him. It was a strange letter, heartless and without a spark of honour. But Ann had loved the man for four years, plighting her troth with him at seventeen. Although he had wounded her inrooted affections and faith, apparently deserted her without a pang, placed her in an intolerable position before a censorious world, she could not put him out of her mind and heart. She wrote to him again, with no reproaches, and she kept her own counsel.