But it was a humble little boy who confessed to Doby: "When I got to page twelve, I couldn't remember—just could not remember what comes after 'potentialities' and 'incomprehensibility' except 'asafœtida.' If they had spelled that word—that 'asafœtida'—I could not have told them the next word. I did not know what it was."
Doby was appalled, as well he might be, by this narrow escape. What if they had failed? That their plan had ended fortunately moved him to say, earnestly: "I like you. I am going to give you my New England primer to remember me by. It's got pictures in it. I don't need it any more. I'll put my name on the back cover, then you can always see who gave it to you. The schoolma'am loaned me this lead on purpose so we can do good printing." And he set down primly the letters, OBADIAH HOLMAN.
"Now," he continued, passing over the lead, "you can have your name in the front to show that it is your book."
Smiling happily at the giver and the gift, the little boy from Kentucky, who was soon to become a Hoosier, carefully wrote his name. Doby, straining his eyes in the moonlight, looked over his shoulder and read the words, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
XI
A PIONEER PUPPY
A Wagon-train Besieged by Fire and Wolves
"SMOKE!" cried Obadiah Holman. "Smoke!" The men of the wagon-train drew together anxiously. They, too, had smelled smoke. But no one of them had wanted to say so.