Harry traveled about with Abe a good deal that summer, “electioneering,” as they called it, from farm to farm.  Samson and Sarah regarded the association as a good school for the boy who had a taste for politics.  Abe used to go into the fields, with the men whose favor he sought, and bend his long back over a scythe or a cradle and race them playfully across the field of grain cutting a wider swath than any other and always holding the lead.  Every man was out of breath at the end of his swath and needed a few minutes for recuperation.  That gave Abe a chance for his statement of the county’s needs and his plan of satisfying them.  He had met and talked with a majority of the voters before the campaign ended in his election in August.  Those travels about the county had been a source of education to the candidate and the voters.

At odd times that summer he had been surveying a new road with Harry Needles for his helper.  In September they resumed their work upon it in the vicinity of New Salem and Abe began to carry the letters in his hat again.  Every day Ann was looking for him as he came by in the dim light of the early morning on his way to work.

“Anything for me?” she would ask.

“No mail in since I saw you, Ann,” was the usual answer.

Often he would say:  “I’m afraid not, but here—­you take these letters and look through ’em and make sure.”

Ann would take them in her hands, trembling with eagerness, and run indoors to the candlelight, and look them over.  Always she came back with the little bundle of letters very slowly as if her disappointment were a heavy burden.

“There’ll he one next mail if I have to write it myself,” Abe said one morning in October as he went on.

To Harry Needles who was with him that morning he said: 

“I wonder why that fellow don’t write to Ann.  I couldn’t believe that he has been fooling her but now I don’t know what to think of him.  Every day I have to deliver a blow that makes her a little paler and thinner.  It hurts me like smashing a finger nail.  I wonder what has happened to the fellow.”

The mail stage was late that evening.  As it had not come at nine Mr. Hill went home and left Abe in the store to wait for his mail.  The stage arrived a few minutes later.  It came as usual in a cloud of dust and a thunder of wheels and hoofs mingled with the crack of the lash, the driver saving his horses for this little display of pride and pomp on arriving at a village.  Abe examined the little bundle of letters and newspapers which the driver had left with him.  Then he took a paper and sat down to read in the firelight.  While he was thus engaged the door opened softly and Ann Rutledge entered.  The Postmaster was not aware of her presence until she touched his arm.

“Please give me a letter,” she said.

“Sit down, Ann,” said he, very gently, as he placed a chair in the fire-glow.