A moment she hesitated. Then she arose. He twined his fingers around her arm and without speaking they crossed the cellar. At the door she paused. "Come on, Ann," he said, and they went up the steps together.
Entering the kitchen, Abe Lincoln said, "I found your little girl in the cellar—in trouble. She has come to tell her mother about it. I'll go fetch the potatoes."
FATHER AND DAUGHTER
After Ann Rutledge confided her heart-troubling secret to her mother, Mrs. Rutledge lost no time in laying the matter before her husband. She feared it would be hard to make him see that John McNeil's conduct toward Ann had been honorable, and John Rutledge believed in the kind of honor that makes a man's word as good as his bond, and would take advantage of no situation to perpetrate an injustice.
He listened in silence as Mrs. Rutledge told him Ann's secret, the secret that was changing the glad-hearted girl into a quiet, nervous woman. Several times he seemed about to speak. He listened, however, until the end, but Mrs. Rutledge knew he was angry.
"Now, John," she counseled, "don't be too hard on John McNeil. What he said may all be true. He may go back and get his people and bring them right here as he said."
"Maybe he will—but does that change the fact that he played double? Does that change the fact that during his years of plenty he has never helped those of his own flesh and blood who may have suffered? John McNeil is as cold a trade-driver as ever hit the trail to the West, and if he comes back here——"