Further discussion about the pig was cut off by a screech from the child, whose face suddenly took on an expression of great fear, while her eyes seemed fixed in horror on something she saw coming toward the house.
Abe Lincoln glanced out.
"It's her Pap coming," the woman explained. "He beat her somethin' fearful yesterday cause she got in the mud. And he told her he'd throw her in up to her neck to-day if she got in the mud, and let her stick there till the buzzards eat 'er up. And how is the poor child to help it when her Pap has brought her here where there ain't nothing but mud to fall in?" Then, turning to the child, she said: "'Tain't no use to have fits. Nobody but God can keep him from gittin' ye."
"Nobody but God, eh?" Abe Lincoln said. "We'll see."
The man came staggering toward the house, cursing and growling, his drunken wrath seeming to centre itself on the child whose face was transfixed with terror.
The child screamed just as he was about to enter the house to make good his threats. Then there suddenly pounced upon him, from just inside, something that caught him in a grip like that of a vise, and pulled him back outside. And then this something, which was a very tall youth, began shaking him and slowly making his way, as he did so, toward the creek.
As a result of the none too gentle shaking, the liquid matter the drunkard had imbibed began to return to the world of visible things until what seemed an endless amount had been emptied along the way they were taking. When the burden of liquor had been lightened, the drunkard, now chattering for pity, was ducked in the stream until his dripping chin was washed clean, and his thick tongue limbered up.
He was then marched back to the cabin door from which the wife, and child with a black eye, looked out in speechless wonder.
"Here you are now," said the tall man. "My name is Abe Lincoln. I keep store in town. I can get here in twenty minutes any time I'm needed to break up this child-beatin'—understand?" and he was off.