Abe Lincoln had been talking in a reminiscent mood with a half-smile on his face. The smile now passed. He continued: "Then death came into the settlement and took several neighbors. The mother of the boy was stricken down. She was thirty-five miles from a doctor and her nearest neighbor was dead. Seven days she lay, her children doin' for her. Then she called the children to her bedside. To the boy she said, 'Be an honest and a faithful boy, be a good and tender man. Look after your sister.' Then death came into the shack of a house and took the patient mother. "The boy's father built a coffin and dug a grave in the clearin' near the house, and here in the edge of the dense forest where the wild things lived the tired mother's body was put to rest. There was no preacher to say a last word, there was no music but the singin' and the sighin' of the trees. There was no one to cover the rude coffin with earth but the father. There were no mourners but the two children, holdin' hands beside the grave and callin' their mother to come back. "After the mother had gone the little girl tried to cook and keep house. The boy went every day to the edge of the forest. Very soon the tangle began to reach over his mother's grave. He wanted her to have a funeral sermon. It was not that he thought she needed it. He was sure she was with God all straightened up and no longer thin but always smilin' and glad. But she would have wanted a sermon, she had spoken of it. "So, the boy wrote a letter to a good Baptist minister his mother had known back in Kentucky and told him what was wanted. It was nearly one year later that he came a distance of eighty miles to preach the sermon. All the people in the country came; not before had a funeral been preached when a woman had so long been sleepin' in her grave. And, as they gathered about, their faces were wet with tears. The boy never forgot it, nor the preacher's words. "That little boy is a man now. Early one mornin' years ago he went for a last time to the lonely grave and kneelin' there, promised his mother's God again that he would be honest and tender. And whatever that boy is now or ever may be, he will owe to that angel mother lyin' under the wild tangle at the edge of the forest with God's stars watchin' it until the judgment-day." It was quite still around the low-burning fire when he ended his story. Then John Rutledge spoke abruptly, "Davy, don't you see the fire needs a log? Sonny, put Tige out, he's scratching down the house. Ann, bring a pitcher of cider and a plate of apples." "Put a few sweet turnips in," Abe Lincoln added; "there's nothing better than a turnip." CHAPTER XXI ONLY WASTING TIME