As the boy and girl arose Lincoln turned slightly. He had not noticed before that the daughter of the house had joined the group.
As he saw her now in the semi-darkness she looked like some fair creature of another world. He had heard that Ann Rutledge was the prettiest girl in town. She had passed his store and been pointed out to him. He had been told she was engaged to marry John McNeil who was the most settled young fellow in town and already worth ten thousand dollars. But neither of these news items had interested him sufficiently to take his attention from the story he had happened to be telling or hearing when she had passed.
As his eyes turned toward her, he saw she was leaning forward as if not to lose a word, and gazing at him intently.
He changed the glance of his eye to give her a chance to look another way. Then he turned his glance on her again. As he did so there came to him a revelation. Here was the pilgrim. How did he know it? He could not tell, yet, as surely as she sat there in the dim light, as surely as his eyes were resting on her golden head and fair face, he knew it.
Mentor Graham and Doctor Allen had launched a spirited discussion on baptism. Abe Lincoln did not join them. He turned his eyes again toward the girl. In the half-light he could not see the expression of her face, but her face was turned toward him and he was conscious she was thinking of him. She turned away as if embarrassed, but no sooner had he shifted than the dark eyes again turned toward the heroic figure, a figure like a bronze, the profile of his face half-Roman and half-Indian. His head rested on a neck of cords and muscle which stood straight out from a turn-down collar.
As irrestible as the pole draws the magnet, the glances of the two were drawn toward each other again, and in the dark each felt the meeting of this glance. Then Ann Rutledge got up and went away.
Abe Lincoln thought of the bird he had heard the night he sat on the ladder—the night the voice had called to him from the heights. He smiled.