"I'm sure I don't know. Her father and I have wondered. It's something about John McNeil I think. I suppose she's heard the talk. I can't understand John McNeil. He's too fine a young fellow to do anything mean I'm sure. I hope John Rutledge don't turn against him. He's slow to rile up, but the fur flies when he does get mad. Run on now after the taters." Abe Lincoln made his way down the cellar-steps softly. The door was not closed. As he entered he thought he saw some object move in one of the dark corners. Opening the door a little more he looked into the dark. When his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom he saw the outlines of a human figure huddled together, and putting down his pan, with shoulders and head bent, he walked over the hard, earthen floor to the dark corner. Here he found Ann Rutledge sitting on the edge of a turnip-box with her head leaning against the log and earthen wall. "Ann--Ann Rutledge," he said softly. A sob was his only answer. "Ann--Ann," he said, bending over her. "Go away, please," she said. "No, I will not go away. You are in trouble. I want to help you." "You cannot--nobody can help me," and again her voice was choked with sobs. "Of course somebody can help you. Tell me about it. Perhaps I can help you." "But I cannot tell--my trouble--is--is--a secret." "A secret," Lincoln said--"a secret--who from?" "From everybody in the world but John McNeil. I promised him I would not tell--not even my mother." "He got you to swear to a secret you could not confide in your mother?" and Lincoln seemed aghast. "Yes--and I never had a secret from Father and Mother before." "Ann--Ann Rutledge!" and Lincoln's voice was no longer gentle; "a secret from a girl's mother is never the right kind of a secret. A mother is the one person on earth no honorable man would want secrets kept from. It is wrong Ann--wrong." "I believe it is. It is wearing me out--it is breaking my heart--I feel that I cannot keep it--and yet I promised." "Ann Rutledge!" Lincoln was bending over her and there was a tone in his voice that compelled her to look up. In the gloom his face had taken on a strange, white cast and something of the expression it had borne when Jack Armstrong had tried the unfair trick. "Ann Rutledge," he whispered under his breath, "has John McNeil in any way wronged you? If he has--if he has--I--will choke the life out of him, and that without warnin'." "Oh, Abraham!" she cried, "don't talk so. I don't know whether he has wronged me or not. That's what the secret's about--I don't know and I wish I could die right here in this cellar," and again she turned her face to the wall and sobbed. Speechless, Abraham Lincoln looked down upon her. His face was pale, his teeth set--his great fists were clenched, yet what could he do? The sobs of the girl beat against his heart, strongly fanning the pain and fierce passion. "What shall I do--what shall I do?" she said brokenly.