Bannister helped the old man up the steps, and made him comfortable in a big porch-chair, and told him a hundred things he wanted to know, and at last he told him about Abraham Lincoln.
“You know I saw the President?”
“I heard all about it, Rhett. You’ve been blessed above your fellow men.”
“But you didn’t know that he spoke to me of you?”
“Of me? Seth Mills?”
“Yes, of you. He told me that story about how you settled the spring controversy with Sam Lewis.”
“No!”
“Yes, he did. And then I told him that I knew you, that you were my nearest and best neighbor; and he said: ‘You tell Seth Mills for me, if you ever see him again, that Abe Lincoln remembers him, and sends him greeting and good wishes in memory of the old days in Sangamon County.’ I’ve carried that message in my heart for you through blood and fire, Seth, and now, to-night, it is yours.”
But the old man did not reply. Instead, his hand stole out and rested on his neighbor’s knee, and then, softly in the darkness, Bannister heard him sob.