"God!" he said to himself. "Is there a God? I wonder. If there is a God He knows how hard I've tried--worked against fate itself, how I wanted to be something in the world. I've loved to study about Washington and have been fool enough to dream I might do something for my country some time. But Washington came from a race of cavaliers. I come from the poorest of ten thousand. Washington at the age of twenty-one was an Adjutant General of Virginia with the rank of Major. Abraham Lincoln at twenty-one was driving two yoke of oxen to an emigrant wagon through the mud-holes and wilds of the West and had never been to school a year in his life. I was tryin'. I felt that I was gettin' ahead. Now comes a burden that will crush me to earth--for Ann Rutledge--Ann Rutledge," and he turned toward her and spoke with fierce determination, "every penny of this debt must be paid if it takes me _to the day of my death_ with my coffin money thrown in." "Yes, Abraham Lincoln," she answered gently, "every penny--and God will help you do it, for God never expects the impossible. He's not that kind of a God, you know." "You talk about God," said Lincoln rather indifferently, "as if you were sure--well, I believe you are. I knew it the night I heard you singin' on the bluff. I have heard you sing that song many times since--sometimes in my dreams. I wish I could feel as you do when you sing your pilgrim song. I have imagined that I will some day, but now--now I think of my mother lyin' under a forgotten tangle where strange beasts creep. She was a pilgrim, too--but she passed out of it all weak and weary. Yet she believed just as you believe, as I have tried to believe." "But, Abraham--you know we are here for just a little time. The song says, 'I can tarry--I can tarry but a night.' Sometimes the night is very short, as when a child passes on. Sometimes it is longer, as when an old, old man dies. But whether long or short, the night gives way to the morning with its light and fresh life and strength. I know it is so." She had been speaking in a quiet voice with a touch of pleading, for she felt he was not paying close attention. "How do you know it?" he asked, turning to her. "Tell me how you know it--or why you believe so strongly." "Let us sit down," she said, "here where the light is fading on the river. See, only the foam shines now. But in just a little while the moon will put a thousand bars of silver on the water. We are not afraid of the dark--you and I--nor of each other. I want to tell you a story." He was paying attention now. They sat down on the broad step of the mill door. To him Ann Rutledge had never been so close before, and yet just now so unattainable. Never before had she spoken to him in such childish simplicity, yet now she was mysteriously beyond his understanding.