She took it, turning toward him with a look of fear and hope.  Then he added: 

“I’m sorry but the truth is it didn’t come.”

“Don’t—­don’t tell me that again,” she pleaded in a broken voice, as she leaned forward covering her face with her hands.

“It is terrible, Ann, that I have to help in this breaking of your heart that is going on.  I seem to be the head of the hammer that hits you so hard but the handle is in other hands.  Honestly, Ann, I wish I could do the suffering for you—­every bit of it—­and give your poor heart a rest.  Hasn’t he written you this summer?”

“Not since July tenth,” she answered.  Then she confided to Abe the fact that her lover had told her before he went away that his name was not McNeil but McNamar; that he had changed his name to keep clear of his family until he had made a success; that he had gone east to get his father and mother and bring them back with him; lastly she came to the thing that worried her most—­the suspicion of her father and mother that John was not honest.

“They say that nobody but a liar would live with a false name,” Ann told him.  “They say that he probably had a wife when he came here—­that that is why he don’t write to me.”

Then after a little silence she pleaded:  “You don’t think that, do you, Abe?”

“No,” said the latter, giving her the advantage of every doubt.  “John did a foolish thing but we must not condemn him without a knowledge of the facts.  The young often do foolish things and sickness would account for his silence.  But whatever the facts are you mustn’t let yourself be slain by disappointment.  It isn’t fair to your friends.  John McNamar may be the best man in the world still the fact remains that it would be a pretty good world even if he were not in it and I reckon there’d be lots of men whose love would be worth having too.  You go home and go to sleep and stop worrying, Ann.  You’ll get that letter one of these days.”

A day or two later Abe and Harry went to Springfield.  Their reason for the trip lay in a talk between the Postmaster and Jack Kelso the night before as they sat by the latter’s fireside.

“I’ve been living where there was no one to find fault with my parts of speech or with the parts of my legs which were not decently covered,” said Abe.  “The sock district of my person has been without representation in the legislature of my intellect up to its last session.  Then we got a bill through for local improvements and the Governor has approved the appropriation.  Suddenly we discovered that there was no money in the treasury.  But Samson Traylor has offered to buy an issue of bonds of the amount of fifteen dollars.”

“I’m glad to hear you declare in favor of external improvements,” said Kelso.  “We’ve all been too much absorbed by internal improvements.  You’re on the right trail, Abe.  You’ve been thinking of the public ear and too little of the public eye.  We must show some respect for both.”