From the stairs Stephen saw Mr. Lincoln threading his way through the crowd below, laughing at one, pausing to lay his hand on the shoulder of another, and replying to a rough sally of a third to make the place a tumult of guffaws.  But none had the temerity to follow him.  When Stephen caught up with him in the little country street, he was talking earnestly to Mr. Hill, the young reporter of the Press and Tribune.  And what do you think was the subject?  The red comet in the sky that night.  Stephen kept pace in silence with Mr. Lincoln’s strides, another shock in store for him.  This rail-splitter, this postmaster, this flat-boatman, whom he had not credited with a knowledge of the New Code, was talking Astronomy.  And strange to say, Mr. Brice was learning.

“Bob,” said Mr. Lincoln, “can you elucidate the problem of the three bodies?”

To Stephen’s surprise, Mr. Hill elucidated.

The talk then fell upon novels and stories, a few of which Mr. Lincoln seemed to have read.  He spoke, among others, of the “Gold Bug.”  “The story is grand,” said he, “but it might as well have been written of Robinson Crusoe’s island.  What a fellow wants in a book is to know where he is.  There are not many novels, or ancient works for that matter, that put you down anywhere.”

“There is that genuine fragment which Cicero has preserved from a last work of Aristotle,” said Mr. Hill, slyly. “’If there were beings who lived in the depths & the earth, and could emerge through the open fissures, and could suddenly behold the earth, the sea, and the:—­vault of heaven—­’”

“But you—­you impostor,” cried Mr. Lincoln, interrupting, “you’re giving us Humboldt’s Cosmos.”

Mr. Hill owned up, laughing.

It is remarkable how soon we accustom ourselves to a strange situation.  And to Stephen it was no less strange to be walking over a muddy road of the prairie with this most singular man and a newspaper correspondent, than it might have been to the sub-terrestrial inhabitant to emerge on the earth’s surface.  Stephen’s mind was in the process of a chemical change:  Suddenly it seemed to him as if he had known this tall Illinoisan always.  The whim of the senatorial candidate in choosing him for a companion he did not then try to account for.

“Come, Mr. Stephen,” said Mr. Lincoln, presently, “where do you hail from?”

“Boston,” said Stephen.

“No!” said Mr. Lincoln, incredulously.  “And how does it happen that you come to me with a message from a rank Abolitionist lawyer in St. Louis?”

“Is the Judge a friend of yours, sir?” Stephen asked.

“What!” exclaimed Mr. Lincoln, “didn’t he tell you he was?”

“He said nothing at all, sir, except to tell me to travel until I found you.”

“I call the Judge a friend of mine,” said Mr. Lincoln.  “He may not claim me because I do not believe in putting all slave-owners to the sword.”