"SIC 'EM, KITTY"
The afternoon following his rather unwelcome visit to Clary Grove, Abe Lincoln was invited by Kit Parsons to attend religious services that night. From the manner of the invitation, the storekeeper gathered that there might be something interesting on foot, and he decided to go.
Some changes had been made in the meeting-place since the gathering of the year before. At the former time Satan had moved the dogs, so the elder explained, to crowd under the exhorter's stand and engage in riotous disagreement. In an endeavor to chew each others ears and gnaw holes in each others hides, they had bumped their backs onto the rude floor underneath the preacher's feet, and in other ways raised a disturbance.
To prevent a repetition of this disorderly conduct on the part of the dogs, the hiding-place under the stand had been made proof against all intruders by the use of stobs driven so close that not even a shadow could creep between.
It was in this long-time rendezvous of dogs that a couple of the Clary Grove gang seemed interested, as between services they strolled several times past the pulpit end of the arbor.
That evening, in the shadowy gloom cast by the arbor roof, a couple of men might have been seen, had the dark been closely scrutinized, moving softly about.
Just what they were doing was not apparent. They seemed to have a barrel close by and a long trough of some kind.