“It pains me to look at you,” Bim went on.

“Wait until I learn to play the flute and the snare drum,” Harry threatened.

“I’m glad that New Salem is so far away,” she sighed.

“I’ll go and look at the new moon through a knot hole,” he laughed.

“My dears, no more of this piping,” said Kelso.  “Bim must tell us what she has learned of the great evil of slavery.  It is most important that Abe should hear it.”

Bim told of revolting scenes she had witnessed in St. Louis and New Orleans—­of flogging and buying and selling and herding.  It was a painful story, the like of which had been traveling over the prairies of Illinois for years.  Some had accepted these reports; many, among whom were the most judicious men, had thought they detected in them the note of gross exaggeration.  Here, at last, was a witness whose word it was impossible for those who knew her to doubt.  Abe put many questions and looked very grave when the testimony was all in.

“If you have any doubt,” said Bim, “I ask you to look at that mark on my arm.  It was made by the whip of Mr. Eliphalet Biggs.”

The young men looked with amazement at a scar some three or four inches long on her forearm.

“If he would do that to his wife, what treatment could you expect for his niggers?” Bim asked.  “There are many Biggses in the South.”

“What so vile as a cheap, rococo aristocracy—­growing up in idleness, too noble to be restrained, with every brutal passion broad blown as flush as May?” Kelso growled.

“Nothing is long sacred in the view of any aristocracy—­not even God,” Abe answered.  “They make a child’s plaything of Him and soon cast Him aside.”

“But I hold that if our young men are to be trained to tyranny in a lot of little nigger kingdoms, our Democracy will die.”

Abe made no answer.  He was always slow to commit himself.

“The North is partly to blame for what has come,” said Samson.  “I guess our Yankee captains brought over most of the niggers and sold them to the planters of the South.”

“There was a demand for them, or those Yankee pirates wouldn’t have brought the niggers,” Harry answered.  “Both seller and buyer were committing a crime.”

“They established a great wrong and now the South is pushing to extend and give it the sanction of law,” said Abe.  “There is the point of irritation and danger.”

“I hear that in the next Legislature an effort will be made to endorse slavery,” said Kelso.  “It would be like endorsing Nero and Caligula.”

“It is a dangerous subject,” Abe answered.  “Whatever happens, I shall not fail to express my opinion of slavery if I go back.”

“The time is coming when you will take the bull by the horns,” said Kelso.  “There’s no fence that will keep him at home.”

“I hope that isn’t true,” Abe answered.

Soon Mrs. Kelso called Bim to set the table.  She and Harry brought it out under the tree, where, in the cool shade, they had a merry dinner.