He placed her on the pillow and called to her again. He wrapped his fingers about her wrist. He put his ear against her breast, half groaning, half calling: "Ann! Ann!" It was still in the room. He arose from the bedside and slightly raising his face, which was drawn and ashy gray, he called: "Ann! Ann!" Again the silence. Then with such a groan as voices the agony of the human soul, he whispered hoarsely: "My God--why hast Thou forsaken me!" A moment later, Mrs. Rutledge and Dr. Allen who were standing beside Davy's bedside heard someone step into the doorway. They looked around. There in the open way that made a rude frame they saw a picture of unutterable sorrow. Deep as the still foundations of the finest soul, the hurt had struck. Like some monarch of a timber-line twisted by titanic force, so he seemed to have been ruthlessly stormbeaten out of semblance to his former self. The little lines that had traced their way on a young man's face seemed suddenly to have grown deep as by long erosion, and he was as pallid as a dead child. He seemed to be making an effort to speak. The muscles of his face twitched. No sound came from his lips, but they framed the word: "Ann!" "Abraham, what is it?" Mrs. Rutledge cried in alarm. Dr. Allen ran to Ann's bedside, Mrs. Rutledge following. The man in the doorway waited until he heard a mother crying: "No--no, she is not _dead_!" Then he was gone. CHAPTER XXXIII "WHERE IS ABE LINCOLN?" News of the death of Ann Rutledge spread quickly, even Snoutful Kelly taking the news to Muddy Point, and though there was much sickness in the vicinity a large number gathered around the open grave where her young body was to be put away. Even Clary Grove, with a constitutional dislike for funerals, was well represented, and Ole Bar, who had made his boast that he had never been to a "berrying" in his life, stood back behind the trees, holding tight a flower which he had picked to put on the grave. Most of those present came from a genuine love of Abe and Ann. Some came to see how the strongest man and greatest lover in Sangamon County would take his bitter loss. These were disappointed. Standing as he did, head and shoulders above any other man in the community, it would have been unnecessary to look for the chief mourner. And yet every eye around the grave searched for Abe Lincoln. While the preacher was trying to give words of hope and consolation to the bereaved ones it was quiet in the place of graves except for subdued sobs. But when the singers began the old, plaint hymn. Asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep, From which none ever wakes to weep, sobs broke out everywhere, for the melody carried to the saddened hearts about the open grave more than the words of the preacher had done, the pain-filled consciousness that the voice of the gladdest, sweetest singer of them all was hushed forever.