On Sunday, the fourteenth day of October, 1866, William H. Herndon knocked at the door of John McNamar, at his residence, but a few feet distant from the spot where Ann Rutledge breathed her last. After some preliminaries not necessary to be related, Mr. Herndon says, "I asked him the question:-- "'Did you know Miss Rutledge? If so, where did she die?' "He sat by his open window, looking westerly; and, pulling me closer to himself, looked through the window and said, 'There, by that,'--choking up with emotion, pointing his long forefinger, nervous and trembling, to the spot,--'there, by that currant-bush, she died. The old house in which she and her father died is gone.' "After further conversation, leaving the sadness to momentarily pass away, I asked this additional question:-- "'Where was she buried?' "'In Concord burying-ground, one mile south-east of this place.'" Mr. Herndon sought the grave. "S. C. Berry," says he, "James Short (the gentleman who purchased in Mr. Lincoln's compass and chain in 1834, under an execution against Lincoln, or Lincoln & Berry, and gratuitously gave them back to Mr. Lincoln), James Miles, and myself were together. "I asked Mr. Berry if he knew where Miss Rutledge was buried,--the place and exact surroundings. He replied, 'I do. The grave of Miss Rutledge lies just north of her brother's, David Rutledge, a young lawyer of great promise, who died in 1842, in his twenty-seventh year.' "The cemetery contains but an acre of ground, in a beautiful and secluded situation. A thin skirt of timber lies on the east, commencing at the fence of the cemetery. The ribbon of timber, some fifty yards wide, hides the sun's early rise. At nine o'clock the sun pours all his rays into the cemetery. An extensive prairie lies west, the forest north, a field on the east, and timber and prairie on the south. In this lonely ground lie the Berrys, the Rutledges, the Clarys, the Armstrongs, and the Joneses, old and respected citizens,--pioneers of an early day. I write, or rather did write, the original draught of this description in the immediate presence of the ashes of Miss Ann Rutledge, the beautiful and tender dead. The village of the dead is a sad, solemn place. Its very presence imposes truth on the mind of the living writer. Ann Rutledge lies buried north of lier brother, and rests sweetly on his left arm, angels to guard her. The cemetery is fast filling with the hazel and the dead."