“The Turner Halls?” Mr. Lincoln surprised him by inquiring.

“Yes.  And I believe that they drill there.”

“Then they will the more easily be turned into soldiers if the time should come,” said Mr. Lincoln.  And he added quickly, “I pray that it may not.”

Stephen had cause to remember that observation, and the acumen it showed, long afterward.

The train made several stops, and at each of them shoals of country people filled the aisles, and paused for a most familiar chat with the senatorial candidate.  Many called him Abe.  His appearance was the equal in roughness to theirs, his manner if anything was more democratic,—­yet in spite of all this Stephen in them detected a deference which might almost be termed a homage.  There were many women among them.  Had our friend been older, he might have known that the presence of good women in a political crowd portends something.  As it was, he was surprised.  He was destined to be still more surprised that day.

When they had left behind them the shouts of the little down of Dixon, Mr. Lincoln took off his hat, and produced a crumpled and not too immaculate scrap of paper from the multitude therein.

“Now, Joe,” said he, “here are the four questions I intend to ask Judge Douglas.  I am ready for you.  Fire away.”

“We don’t care anything about the others,” answered Mr. Medill.  “But I tell you this.  If you ask that second one, you’ll never see the United States Senate.”

“And the Republican party in this state will have had a blow from which it can scarcely recover,” added Mr. Judd, chairman of the committee.

Mr. Lincoln did not appear to hear them.  His eyes were far away over the wet prairie.

Stephen held his breath.  But neither he, nor Medill, nor Judd, nor Hill guessed at the pregnancy of that moment.  How were they to know that the fate of the United States of America was concealed in that Question, —­was to be decided on a rough wooden platform that day in the town of Freeport, Illinois?

But Abraham Lincoln, the uncouth man in the linen duster with the tousled hair, knew it.  And the stone that was rejected of the builders was to become the corner-stone of the temple.

Suddenly Mr. Lincoln recalled himself, glanced at the paper, and cleared his throat.  In measured tones, plainly heard above the rush and roar of the train, he read the Question: 

“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?”

Mr. Medill listened intently.

“Abe,” said he, solemnly, “Douglas will answer yes, or equivocate, and that is all the assurance these Northern Democrats want to put Steve Douglas in the Senate.  They’ll snow you under.”

“All right,” answered Mr. Lincoln, quietly.