He did and in time confessed to Samson Traylor that Mr. Lincoln’s reproach had been the saving of him.  A judgment was rendered in favor of the plaintiffs for the full amount of their claim with costs.  The character of Lionel Davis had been sufficiently revealed.  Even the credulous Mrs. Kelso turned against him.  Mr. Lincoln’s skill as a lawyer was recognized in the north as well as in the middle counties.  From that day forth no man enjoyed a like popularity in Tazewell County.

When Samson and Harry Needles left the Court-House, there seemed to be no obstacle between the young man and the consummation of his wishes.  Unfortunately, as they were going down the steps Davis, who blamed Samson for his troubles, flung an insult at the sturdy Vermonter.  Samson, who had then arrived at years of firm discretion, was little disturbed by the anger of a man so discredited.  But Harry, on the sound of the hateful words, had leaped forward and dealt the speculator a savage blow in the face which for a few seconds had deprived him of the power of speech.  That evening a friend of Davis called at the City Hall with a challenge.  The hot-blooded young soldier accepted it against the urgent counsel of Samson Traylor, Mr. Lincoln having left the city.  It was a fashion of the time for gentlemen to stand up and shoot at each other after such a quarrel.  But Davis, since the trial, had no character to defend and therefore no right to enter the field of honor with a man of Harry’s standing.  But the young officer had promised to fight and was not to be dissuaded.

As to the details of the tragic scene that followed next day, the writer has little knowledge.  Samson was not the type of man for such a chronicle.  The diary speaks of his part in it with shame and sorrow and remorse.  His mind seems to have been too much engaged with its own fears and thoughts to take note of the color.  We may infer from one remark in it that the sky was clear.  We know, too, that it was at day-break when he and Harry rode to a point on the prairie “something more than a mile from the city limits.”  There he tells us they met Davis and one friend of the latter and two surgeons who had driven to the scene in a box wagon.  It is evident, too, that great secrecy had been observed in the plan and its execution and that, until sometime after the last act, Lincoln knew nothing of the later developments in the drama of Davis’s downfall.  For the rest of the deplorable scene the historian must content himself with the naked details in the diary of a puritan pioneer.  They are, at least, direct and derive a certain vividness from their haste to be done with it as a proceeding of which the less said the better.

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