So Thomas resolved to "pull up stakes" and move on, still to the westward.

Thomas found a newcomer who was willing to take his partly improved farm and log cabin for ten barrels of whiskey and twenty dollars in cash. This represented three hundred dollars in value, and was the price that he had set upon his homestead. Whiskey made from corn was, in those days, one of the readiest forms of currency in the trading and barter continually going on among the settlers; and, even where drunkenness was almost unknown, the fiery spirit was regarded as a perfectly legitimate article of daily use and a substitute for money in trade.

Thomas Lincoln built a flatboat, which he loaded with his ten barrels of whiskey and the heavier articles of household furniture. Then, pushing off alone, he floated safely down to the Ohio. Here he met with a great disaster.. Caught between eddying currents, and entangled in the snags and "sawyers" that beset the stream, his frail craft was upset and much of his stuff was lost. With assistance, he righted the boat, and, with what had been saved from the wreck, he landed at Thompson's Ferry, found an ox-cart to transport his slender stock of valuables into the forest, and finally piled them in an oak-opening in Spencer County, Indiana, about eighteen miles from the river.

Left at home in their dismantled cabin, with a scanty supply of provisions, the mother and little ones made the most of their time. The two children attended Caleb Hazel's school, but Abraham found time to snare game for the family dinner-pot, and, in an emergency, the house-mother could knock over a deer at long range. One bed-ticking filled with dried forest leaves. and husks sufficed for their rest at night, and bright

and early in the morning the future President was out in the nipping autumn air, chopping wood for the day's fire. As the time drew near for the father's return, Mrs. Lincoln, leading her living boy, paid her last visit to the grave of the little one whom she had lost in infancy. And his sad mother's prayers and tears by the side of the unmarked mound in the wilderness made an impression on the mind of the lad that time never effaced.

But when Thomas Lincoln returned to his small brood, it was not with any boastfulness. He had met with what was to them a great loss. Much of their meagre stock of household stuff and farming tools was at the bottom of the Ohio River. Leaving the rescued fragments in care of a friendly settler, he had made a bee-line for the old Kentucky home; and here he was, with a flattering report of the richness of the land to which they were bound.

It was a long journey that was before them. Procuring two horses and loading them with the household stuff and wardrobe of the family, Thomas Lincoln, wife, and two children took up their line of march for the new home in Indiana. At night they slept on the fragrant pine twigs; and by day they plodded their way toward the Ohio River. They were like true soldiers of fortune, subsisting on the country through which they marched. Here and there, it was needful to clear their way through tangled thickets, and now and again they came to streams that must be forded or swam. By all sorts of expedients, the little family contrived to get on from day to day, occupying a week in this transit from one home to another. The nights were cool but pleasant. No rain fell on them in the way, and after a week of free and easy life in the woods,

they came to the bank of the river. When they looked over into the promised land, they saw nothing but forest, almost trackless forest, stretching far up and down the stream. All was silent save for the ripplings of the water and the occasional note of some wandering bird.

CHAPTER II

THE BOYHOOD OF LINCOLN

PICKING up their td

ICKING up their property left in charge of one of the scattered settlers by Thomas Lincoln on his first visit, the family pushed on into the wilderness, where on a grassy knoll in the heart of the untrodden forest, they fixed upon the site of their future dwellingplace. A slight hunter's camp was all that could be built to shelter the new settlers during their first winter in the woods of southern Indiana. The open front of this "half-faced camp" was partially screened with "pelts," as the half-dressed skins of wild animals were called. A fireplace of sticks and clay, with a chimney of the same materials, occupied one corner of the hut. Here the Lincolns spent their first winter in the new State of Indiana.

Abraham was now in his eighth year, tall, ungainly, fast-growing, long-legged, and clad in the garb of the frontier. He wore a shirt of linsey-woolsey, a fabric homespun of mixed cotton and wool, and dyed with colors obtained from the roots and barks of the forest. According to his own statement, he never wore stockings until he was a young man grown." His feet were covered with rough cowhide shoes, but oftener with moccasins fashioned deftly by his mother's hands. Deerskin breeches and a hunting-shirt of the same

material completed his outfit, except for the coon-skin cap that adorned his shaggy head, the tail of the animal hanging down, behind, at once an ornament and a convenient handle when occasion required.

But the lad did not take kindly to hunting. Once, as he used to tell of himself, while yet a child, he caught a glimpse of a flock of wild turkeys feeding near the camp, and, venturously taking down his father's rifle from its pegs on the wall, he took aim through a chink in the cabin and killed a noble bird. It was his first shot at a living thing, and he never forgot the mingled pain and pleasure that it broughtpain because he dreaded to take life, and pleasure because he had brought down his game.

The woods swarmed with bears, deer, woodchucks, raccoon, wild turkeys, and other creatures, furry or feathered, useful for the table or for furnishing forth the scanty wardrobe of the settlers. None need starve so long as snares and ammunition were handy for the hunter and trapper. But it was a hard life, hard for children, and hardest of all for women. No neighbor dropped in for a few minutes' friendly gossip, with the small news of the day. Only as a faint echo from out another world came the news of domestic politics, foreign complications, and national affairs. James Madison was President of the United States, and Congress and the country were stirred greatly over the admission of Missouri, the extension of slavery westward of the Mississippi River, and other matters of great moment then and thereafter.

It was in the autumn of 1816 that the Lincolns took up their abode in the wilds of Indiana. In February of the following year, Thomas Lincoln, with the slight assistance of little Abe, felled the logs needed for a