* * * * *

“It was my great day of fulfillment, all the dearer because I had come back to health and youth and beloved scenes out of those years shadowed with loneliness and despair,” he writes.  “The best part of it, I assure you, was the face I loved and that musical voice ringing like a bell in merry laughter and in the songs which had stirred my heart in the days of its tender youth.  You—­the dear and gentle mother of my later boyhood—­are entitled to know of my happiness when I heard that voice tell me in its sweeter tone of the love which has endured through all these years of stern trial.  We talked of our plans as we sat among the ferns and mosses in the cool shade sweetened by the incense of burning fagots, over that repast to which we shall be returning often for refreshment in poorer days.  We had thought of you and of the man so well beloved of you and us in all these plans.  We shall live in Springfield so that we may be near you and him and our friend, Honest Abe.”

* * * * *

It is a long letter presenting minute details in the history of that sentimental journey and allusion to matters which have no part in this record.  Its substance being fully in the consciousness of the writer, he tenderly folds it up and returns it to the package—­yellow and brittle and faded and having that curious fragrance of papers that have lain for scores of years in the gloom and silence of a locked mahogany drawer.  So alive are these letters with the passion of youth in long forgotten years that the writer ties the old ribbon and returns them to their tomb with a feeling of sadness, finding a singular pathos in the contrast of their look and their contents.  They are turning to dust but the soul of them has gone into this little history.

The young man and woman mounted their horses and resumed their journey.  It was after two o’clock.  The Grand Prairie lay ahead of them.  The settlement of Plain’s End was twenty-one miles away on its farther side.  They could just see its tall oak trees in the dim distance.

“We must hurry if we get there before dark,” said the girl.  “Above all we must be careful to keep our direction.  It’s easy to get lost down in the great prairie.”

They heard a cat-bird singing in a near thicket as they left their camp.  It reminded Bim of her favorite ballad and she sang it with the spirit of old: 

  “My sweetheart, come along—­
   Don’t you hear the glad song
   As the notes of the nightingale flow? 
   Don’t you hear the fond tale of the sweet nightingale
   As she sings in the valleys below? 
   As she sings in the valleys below?”