"Maybe, but I don't see how," said the boy.
"There are lots of things you can't see from where you are at this present moment. There are a good many miles ahead o' you I reckon and one thing you'll see plainly, by and by, that it's all for the best. I've suffered a lot myself but I can see now it has been a help to me. There isn't an hour of it I'd be willing to give up."
They paddled along in silence for a time.
"It was my fault," said Harry presently. "I never could say the half I wanted to when she was with me. My tongue is too slow. She gave me a chance and I wasn't man enough to take it. That's all I've got to say on that subject."
He seemed to find it hard to keep his word for in a moment he added:
"I wouldn't have been so good a scout if it hadn't been for her. I guess the Injuns would have got me but when I thought of her I just kept going."
"I think you did it just because you were a brave man and had a duty to perform," said Abe.
Some time afterward in a letter to his father the boy wrote:
"I often think of that ride down the river and the way he talked to me. It was so gentle. He was a big, powerful giant of a man who weighed over two hundred pounds, all of it bone and muscle. But under his great strength was a woman's gentleness; under the dirty, ragged clothes and the rough, brown skin grimy with dust and perspiration, was one of the cleanest souls that ever came to this world. I don't mean that he was like a minister. He could tell a story with pretty rough talk in it but always for a purpose. He hated dirt on the hands or on the tongue. If another man had a trouble Abe took hold of it with him. He would put a lame man's pack on top of his own and carry it. He loved flowers like a woman. He loved to look at the stars at night and the colors of the sunset and the morning dew on the meadows. I never saw a man so much in love with fun and beauty."
They reached Havana that evening and sold their canoe to a man who kept boats to rent on the river shore. They ate a hot supper at the tavern and got a ride with a farmer who was going ten miles in their direction. From his cabin some two hours later they set out afoot in the darkness.