“I’ve noticed that facts get kind o’ slippery when they come in a bunch, as they did on our journey,” said Samson.  “Seems so they wore each other smooth and got hard to hold.”

“Ransom Prigg used to say it was easy enough to ketch eels, but it was powerful hard to hold ’em,” Abe remarked.  “He caught three eels in a trap one day and the trap busted and let ’em loose in the boat.  He kept grabbin’ and tusslin’ around the boat till the last eel got away.  ’I never had such a slippery time in all the days o’ my life,’ said Rans.  ‘One eel is a dinner, but three eels is jest a lot o’ slippin’ an’ disapp’intment.’”

“That’s exactly the point I make,” said Kelso.  “A man with too many eels in the boat will have none for dinner.  The city man is at a great disadvantage.  Events slip away from him and leave nothing.  His intellect gets the habit of letting go.  It loses its power to seize and hold.  His impressions are like footprints on a beach.  They are washed away by the next tide.”

There was much talk at the fireside after dinner, all of which doubtless had an effect on the fortunes of the good people who sat around it, and the historian must sort the straws, and with some regret, for bigger things are drawing near in the current.  Samson and Sarah had been telling of their adventures on the long road.

“We are all movers,” said Kelso.  “We can not stay where we are for a single day—­not if we are alive.  Most of us never reach that eminence from which we discover the littleness of ourselves and our troubles and achievements and the immensities of power and wisdom by which we are surrounded.”

At least one of that company was to remember the words in days of adversity and triumph.  Soon after that dinner the memories of the little community began to register an unusual procession of thrilling facts.

Early in April an Indian scare spread from the capital to the remotest corners of the state.  Black Hawk, with many warriors, had crossed the Mississippi and was moving toward the Rock River country.  Governor Reynolds called for volunteers to check the invasion.

Abe, whose address to the voters had been printed in the Sangamon Journal, joined a volunteer company and soon became its captain.  On the tenth of April he and Harry Needles left for Richland to go into training.  Samson was eager to go, but could not leave his family.

Bim Kelso rode out into the fields where Harry was at work the day before he went away.

“This is a great surprise,” said Harry.  “I don’t see you any more except at a distance.”

“I don’t see you either.”

“I didn’t think you wanted to see me.”

“You’re easily discouraged,” she said, looking down with a serious face.

“You made me feel as if I didn’t want to live any longer.”

“I reckon I’m mean.  I made myself feel a million times worse.  It’s awful to be such a human as I am.  Some days I’m plum scared o’ myself.”