spent no time in moping or selfish mourning. Already, so early as when they went to Indiana, his little axe rang out in the woods helping his father clear the farm and build the rude cabin. He was a very fine example of industrial education; for his head and his hands always kept pace. He worked and studied and thought and grew strong in mind and body.

And at this time the little pioneer was not yet ten years old.

V.

A GOOD STEP-MOTHER.

Imagine a cabin eighteen feet square built of hewn logs, a cabin with a doorway without any door, with openings for windows without any frames or windows in them, and into door and windows slanting the winter rains and drifting snows. The cabin was in the midst of the forest, there was always plenty of wood to be had for the cutting. But how much heat would the great logs manage to get into a dwelling where the bitter cold of an Indiana winter poured in unchecked through all these openings, and the dampness of the woods added a chill to the frosty air? Thomas Lincoln thought it was good enough. But even he passed a dreary winter there after the death of his wife.

In that cabin were his two children, Abraham who that season saw his tenth birthday, and his sister about two years his elder. There was not much housekeeping to be done; even the floor

was the hard earth uncovered by planks. It must have been bitterly cold. The furniture was such as other pioneers had; a few threelegged stools; a bedstead made of poles fastened to the logs in the cabin and on the outer corner held up by a stick driven into the ground. A great hewn log on four legs made the table; kettle, skillet, pot and a few tin and pewter dishes were all they had to cook with and to eat from. Abraham slept in the loft of the cabin; it has been said before that he got up there

a ladder made of wooden pegs driven in between the logs of the cabin wall.

The poor children had plenty of time that winter to remember the dear mother lying under the snow, and to grieve for her.

But this was as to hardship the dreariest and saddest year to Abraham. When another December was upon them, a great and happy change had come into the lives of these poor children. It came about in this way. One day after his wife had been dead a year, Thomas Lincoln left the cabin and the children and went to Kentucky. It was late in the autumn. There was corn enough in the house, and bacon, and they could get fresh meat in the forest; they could have wood for the chopping; and there were neighbors to go to if they should need them very much, although we should probably think

that the people they called neighbors lived a long way off. There was another boy also in the cabin, Dennis Hanks, a relative of the children's mother. That made it better for them. He had come to Indiana with the Sparrows, and after their death lived with the Lincoln household. But it was no fun for these poor little folks to wait there nearly a month with the snow drifting into the cabin, the winds howling through the forest and the little dwelling all open to the weather. The children made the best of things, however.

Then, one day in December they heard Tom Lincoln's voice shouting to them, and they all ran out of doors to see what was the matter.

There at the edge of the clearing was the father, sure enough, with a team of four horses and a lumber wagon full of furniture finer than the children had ever seen. But this was not all; it was a very small part of all. For with Mr. Lincoln was his new wife, Mrs. Sally Johnston of Kentucky. Tom used to know her when they were both young people and she was Miss Sally Bush. It is said that he wanted to marry her then, and she would not have him. But after she had married Mr. Johnston, and he had died, she changed her mind and said "yes" to Mr. Lincoln. So, here she was with her three children and her household goods, come to be

the mistress of the cabin. And more than this, a great deal to be a true, loving mother to these little ones and to make no difference between her own children and her husband's.

It is said that what first touched her mother heart was the utter forlornness of them. Since their mother's death Abraham and his little sister had not known how to make any new clothes for themselves, or had them to make, and their father had to do the best he could for himself. They stood there pushing their bare, frost bitten feet back and forth in the snow, looking down at their tattered garments, remembering their own matted hair, their unwashed hands and faces, and gazing with a bitter sense of contrast at the neat and well-dressed children of the new mother.

But what put shyness into their greeting filled the warm mother heart of the noble woman with pity and love for the motherless ones. From that day so long as she and they livedand she long outlived her famous step-sonthe two were the children of her love as much as her very own were.

But she did not take her lovingness out in sentiment. She went straight to work on the problem before her; and it was a hard one. Her husband's children and the young stranger were made clean, and comfortably clothed. She