Two more letters came at long intervals. Then they ceased altogether. In every sparsely settled community there is much curiosity about the unusual event, and some malice toward misfortune. Here offensive gossip ran about. It was reported that McNamar was a fugitive from justice--a thief, a murderer, that he already had a wife in the East. The talk enraged her father, and enveloped sweet Ann Rutledge in an atmosphere of blight. The truth--that he had tired of her--was surely not so bad as these rumours of criminal acts. With that element of the maternal that underlies the love of women for men, she came to the defence of his good name. She showed her father the letters, laying the sacrifice of her rejected self on the altar of a lost, unworthy love. But it had the opposite effect she intended. In James Rutledge’s Southern code this was the blackest thing a man could do. A thousand miles of wilderness separated him from the scoundrel who had broken the heart of his daughter! Was John McNamar to go unpunished? Not an old man, he seemed to break up physically under the blow. Public sympathy was with him and with the deserted girl. Her father was her lover now, surrounding her with every attention and tender care. It was remarked in a day and place when family affection was not demonstrative. Again, in the country parlance, it was said: “James Rutledge is just wrapped up in Ann.” A new element was added to this absorbing drama when Lincoln began to pay open court to Ann, publishing it far and wide that he would be proud to win what McNamar had not cared to keep. A wave of enthusiastic admiration swept over the country-side. Nothing else was talked of in the town and around the mill. His chivalrous love may well have played its part in his spectacular campaign for the legislature, and his triumphant election in August. Ann gave no encouragement to his suit. To Lincoln, who was reading Jack Kelso’s precious copy of Shakespeare’s plays at the time, his love must have seemed another Ophelia, crushed by unkindness, bewildered by a world in which men could break faith. As she shrank from the blunt perception of curious neighbours she came to lean more and more on Lincoln’s devotion. It had in it, permeating its human quality, that divine compassion which, enlarged, was afterward to free a race. He wanted to free her spirit from bonds of the past. In the early days of his wooing his personal feeling and hopes were put in the background.