The next moment Abe Lincoln had taken her in his strong arms and put her across to the other bank. "Look, Abraham," she said pointing to the lacy, green leaves. "Do you notice that some are longer than others and greener and stronger? Well, in this difference lies a secret." She sat down on a shelf of rock and began pushing the brown leaves and mould away from something. Her face was bright with interest. But Abe Lincoln was not yet interested in what she was, but in her. "See here is the dirt in which this little sickly plant grows and its roots go no farther than this," and she measured a finger length. "But the roots of this big, strong plant go too deep for measurement, and so I learn that the blacker the soil, and the deeper the plant goes into the dark and the silence, the higher it reaches toward the blue sky. Isn't it wonderful that even little plants can preach such great sermons?" "Tongues in the trees, books in the runnin' brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything," Abe Lincoln repeated. "That sounds like the Bible, but I've never found it there." "It got left out," he laughed. "Shakespeare put it in his." Ann smiled, but she had something more to say. "When I come here, Abraham, I think of you. I can't say you are like a fern, they are too small and weak among the growing things. You are like a wonderful tree that reaches up above every other, and the reason, I am sure, is because the roots of your life have gone deeper into the dark and the silence than the rest of them. When I hear them talking in class-meeting about 'growing in grace and the knowledge of God,' I think of you and my ferns, and I say, 'Out of the depths, fresh strength; out of the dark, new life; and even in the gloom we are on the way.'" He was listening intently now. "But, Ann," he said, "the ferns come to life only to die again." "Yes, and come back more and better the next season. It is not the special leaf nor flower that is eternal; these are but the forms. It is _life itself_ that is eternal. And the burial in the dark does not kill it. Last year there were two leaves here, this year there are six, next year there will be a whole family. It is life more abundant, Abraham, and from it all I learn to go on my way as the brook goes, singing always." For a moment there was no sound in the fern-dell except the tinkling music of the water running over the stones. "I wonder what it all means," he observed. "Sometimes I feel that I am a child of some dark tragedy. Again I feel like I am a child of special Providence. I wonder which I am--perhaps neither." "Perhaps both," she said "Great suffering and great joy belong to the same soul." Ann was still sitting on the damp rock with her vine wreath in her hair. Through the tall trunks of the trees on the bluff above, the sun-light fell into the ravine, a ray falling across her head and shoulders.