The gray horses, Colonel and Pete, stood by the fence in the pasture lot and whinnied as the men passed.
"They know us all right," said Samson. "I guess they feel slighted, but they've had their last journey. They're about worn out. We'll give 'em a vacation this summer. I wouldn't sell 'em. They're a part o' the family. You can lay yer hand on either one and say that no better boss was ever wrapped in a surcingle."
They met Abe Lincoln at the tavern, where he was waiting on a big horse which he had borrowed for the trip from James Rutledge. Without delay, the three men set out on the north road in perfect weather. From the hill's edge they could look over a wooded plain running far to the east.
"It's a beautiful place to live up here, but on this side you need a ladder to get to it. The little village is going to die—too much altitude. It's a horse killer. No team can draw anything but its breath going up that hill. It's all right for a generation of walkers, but the time has come when we must go faster than a walk and carry bigger burdens than a basket or a bundle. Every one will be moving—mostly to Petersburg."
As they rode on, the young statesman repeated a long passage from one of the sermons of Dr. William Ellery Channing on the Instability of Human Affairs.
"I wish that I had your memory," Samson remarked.
"My memory is like a piece of metal," said the young legislator. "Learning is not easy for me. It's rather slow work—like engraving with a tool. But when a thing is once printed on my memory it seems to stay there. It doesn't rub out. When I run across a great idea, well expressed, I like to put it on the wall of my mind where I can live with it. In this way every man can have his own little art gallery and be in the company of great men."
They forded a creek in deep water, where a bridge had been washed away.
As they came out dripping on the farther shore. Lincoln remarked: "The thing to do in fording a deep stream is to keep watch o' your horse's ears. As long as you can see `em you're all right."
"Mr. Lincoln, I'm sorry—you got into a hole," said Samson.