looked up to.  That day a number of men and boys increased my shame by following us to the wagon and wanting to shake hands and feel of my muscles and paining my soul with praise.  It’s a reckless country.  You feel it as soon as you get here.  In time, I fear, I shall be as headlong as the rest of them.  Some way the news of my act has got here from Springfield.  Sarah was kind of cut up.  Jack Kelso has nicknamed me ‘The man with the iron arms,’ and Abe, who is a better man every way, laughs at my embarrassment and says I ought to feel honored.  For one thing Jack Armstrong has become a good citizen.  His wife has foxed a pair of breeches for Abe.  They say McNoll has left the country.  There has been no deviltry here since that day.  I guess the gang is broken up—­too much iron in its way.”

* * * * *

Sarah enjoyed fixing up the cabin.  Jack Kelso had given her some deer and buffalo skins to lay on the floors.  The upper room, reached by a stick ladder, had its two beds, one of which Harry occupied.  The children slept below in a trundle bed that was pushed under the larger one when it was made up in the morning.

“Some time I’m going to put in a windletrap and get rid o’ that stick ladder,” Samson had said.

Sarah had all the arts of the New England home maker.  Under her hand the cabin, in color, atmosphere and general neatness, would have delighted a higher taste than was to be found on the prairies, save in the brain of Kelso who really had some acquaintance with beauty.  To be sure the bed was in one corner, spread with its upper cover knit of gray yarn harmonizing in color with the bark of the log walls.  A handsome dark brown buffalo robe lay beside it.  The rifle and powder horn were hung above the mantel.  The fireplace had its crane of wrought iron.

Every one in the little village came to the house warming.

“There is nothing in America so beautiful as ‘this here kind o’ thing’ when the firelight shines upon it,” said Kelso who often indulged in the vernacular of the real ladder climbers.

“Well, of course, it isn’t like Boston or New York,” Sarah answered.

“Thank God!” Kelso exclaimed.  “New York hurts my feelings, so many of its buildings are of grand design and small proportions.  Mrs. Traylor, you are lucky to have this beautiful island in an ocean of music.  There is music in the look and sound of these meadows—­bird music, wind music, the level music of Felician David’s Desert.  Perhaps you don’t know about that and really it doesn’t matter.  Traylor, tune up your fiddle.”

Samson began to play, stopping often to give the hand of welcome to a guest.  The people of New Salem were in their best clothes.  The women wore dresses of new calico—­save Mrs. Dr. Allen, who wore a black silk dress which had come with her from her late home in Lexington.  Bim Kelso came in a dress of red muslin trimmed with white lace.  Ann Rutledge also wore a red dress and came with Abe.  The latter was rather grotesque in his new linsey trousers, of a better length than the former pair, but still too short.