But what was this feeling that gradually crept over him?  Surprise?  Cautiously he raised his eyes.  The hands were coming around to the front.  Suddenly one of them was thrown sharply back, with a determined gesture, the head was raised,—­and.—­and his shame was for gotten.  In its stead wonder was come.  But soon he lost even that, for his mind was gone on a journey.  And when again he came to himself and looked upon Abraham Lincoln, this was a man transformed.  The voice was no longer shrill.  Nay, it was now a powerful instrument which played strangely on those who heard.  Now it rose, and again it fell into tones so low as to start a stir which spread and spread, like a ripple in a pond, until it broke on the very edge of that vast audience.

“Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?”

It was out, at last, irrevocably writ in the recording book of History, for better, for worse.  Beyond the reach of politician, committee, or caucus.  But what man amongst those who heard and stirred might say that these minutes even now basting into eternity held the Crisis of a nation that is the hope of the world?  Not you, Judge Douglas who sit there smiling.  Consternation is a stranger in your heart,—­but answer the question if you can.  Yes, your nimble wit has helped you out of many a tight corner.  You do not feel the noose—­as yet.  You do not guess that your reply will make or mar the fortunes of your country.  It is not you who can look ahead two short years and see the ship of Democracy splitting on the rocks at Charleston and at Baltimore, when the power of your name might have steered her safely.

But see! what is this man about whom you despise?  One by one he is taking the screws out of the engine which you have invented to run your ship.  Look, he holds them in his hands without mixing them, and shows the false construction of its secret parts.

For Abraham Lincoln dealt with abstruse questions in language so limpid that many a farmer, dulled by toil, heard and understood and marvelled.  The simplicity of the Bible dwells in those speeches, and they are now classics in our literature.  And the wonder in Stephen’s mind was that this man who could be a buffoon, whose speech was coarse and whose person unkempt, could prove himself a tower of morality and truth.  That has troubled many another, before and since the debate at Freeport.

That short hour came all too quickly to an end.  And as the Moderator gave the signal for Mr. Lincoln, it was Stephen’s big companion who snapped the strain, and voiced the sentiment of those about him.

“By Gosh!” he cried, “he baffles Steve.  I didn’t think Abe had it in him.”

The Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, however, seemed anything but baffled as he rose to reply.  As he waited for the cheers which greeted him to die out, his attitude was easy and indifferent, as a public man’s should be.  The question seemed not to trouble him in the least.  But for Stephen Brice the Judge stood there stripped of the glamour that made him, even as Abraham Lincoln had stripped his doctrine of its paint and colors, and left it punily naked.