Ann's eyes had not for an instant left the figure of the man who was speaking. The homely, bronzed face in the frame of black hair, the slightly stooping shoulders, the big hands stretched at full length on the arms of the chair, made a firelight picture fascinating to the girl. He had asked a question--she had not answered it, yet she leaned forward, and after studying his face a moment she said, "Abraham, you look as if you were starving. I must get you something to eat"; and she hurried to the kitchen. Lincoln leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. "It wouldn't be fair to John McNeil," he seemed to hear her saying again, and with a deep sigh he said in his heart: "Separated by the rules of the game of honor." * * * * * "Ann," said Mrs. Rutledge the next morning, "what did you and Abe Lincoln find to talk about so long last night?" "Camp-meetings and mufflers and Kelly's new baby," Ann answered. "You must be careful, Ann," her mother said. "Your word is out to John McNeil and he has a good start in life. Abe is a fine boy and honest as the day is long, but he hasn't got anything to take care of a woman on. Besides, he does all sorts of queer things. For all we know he may yet take to writing poetry. You must not give him any encouragement. Since that quilting-bee I've had some thoughts. He wasn't there to learn to quilt. He'd be fearful hard to get shut of if he got in love good and hard." "He has no idea of love at all," Ann hastened to assure her mother. "He doesn't even know what it means. He told me so." "That's the worst kind to get stirred up. The kind that just naturally knows how are always having attacks of love the same as they do attacks of measles. But the kind that has to be waked up and taught by some woman have terrible bad cases. Don't you get Abe Lincoln stirred up." "He doesn't care for girls, anyway--no particular ones. He likes books and is not the kind to fall in love." "Love can pipe through any kind of a reed," was Mrs. Rutledge's answer. "Don't stir Abe Lincoln up." CHAPTER XXII TOWN TOPICS Nor many months had elapsed after Abraham Lincoln went into the "store business" before those interested began to feel that John McNeil had not been mistaken when he said Lincoln would not be a success as a business man. After everybody else in town was questioning whether or not the store was making money, Lincoln himself declared it was petering out. This in no way interfered with his story-telling and studying hours. The store was head-quarters for political and all other kinds of discussions, and study-hall for the most unwearying scholar in the village. So it happened that when Abraham should have been devising schemes to make money he was memorizing Blackstone, debating some point of Constitutional law, or working out some rule of grammar.