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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 PASADENA HOME 
 FOR THE AGED
 
 THE MATRIX
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 BY 
 
 MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS 
 
 Author of "BLUE-GRASS AND BROADWAY," "THE 
 
 GOLDEN BIRD," "THE MELTING 
 
 OF MOLLY," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1920
 
 Copyright, 1920, by 
 THE CENTURY Co. 
 
 P^^blishcd, February, 1920
 
 PS 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 In this period of the History of the United 
 States of America, when men and women 
 have again been called upon to sacrifice and 
 die to preserve and extend the liberty upon 
 which their great Democracy is founded, it 
 behooves us to examine and pass judgment 
 upon all of its foundation stones. The au 
 thor claims that the Romance of Thomas 
 Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, the father and 
 mother of Abraham Lincoln, is one of those 
 foundation stones. It has been chipped at 
 and marred and banked over by the dust of 
 time since those pioneer days in which it was 
 enacted, of which so little of fact, but so 
 much of tradition remains. The author has 
 dug deep into all legends and collected as 
 much as possible of documentary evidence, 
 and now presents the reconstructed romance
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 as a work of fiction for which she hopes she 
 has been granted a measure of inspiration. 
 Her hope of such inspiration is based on the 
 fact that she was born and reared in the 
 same little Bluegrass valley which was the 
 cradle of the great romance, and many of 
 the traditions which she has used in her build 
 ing are her inheritance. The principal 
 source of her courage to make such an at 
 tempt, and material for the work, came from 
 the research into the lives of these humble 
 parents of the great Lincoln, conducted over 
 a period of many years by her aunt, Hannah 
 Daviess Pittman, genealogist of distinction, 
 whose conclusions agree with those of Car 
 oline Hanks Hitchcock, set forth in a small 
 volume on the subject. If this story of the 
 love of brave Nancy Hanks, who had her 
 self been held captive by the Indians, for the 
 simple rough abolitionist, Thomas Lincoln, 
 in whom she must have both planted and 
 fanned the flame of the desire for human 
 liberty and equality, makes the reader feel
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 that the primitive greatness of heart and soul 
 of these two pioneers was destined to as 
 sure the production of Abraham Lincoln, 
 and gains for them due credit for that great 
 ness, the author will rest content. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of 
 the United States, and author of the Eman 
 cipation Proclamation, said of his mother, 
 Nancy Hanks Lincoln: "All that I am or 
 ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother, 
 blessings on her memory."
 
 THE MATRIX
 
 PASADENA HOMb 
 FOR THE AGED 
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A GREAT love is nourished by the ebh 
 and flow of the race blood in the gen 
 erations before it, and when it becomes an 
 iridescent matrix it is very apt to produce 
 the pearl of price. The great twilight stars 
 watched when her father lifted wee Xancy 
 Hanks down from a pack-saddle, in which 
 he had brought her along the Wilderness 
 Trail from Virginia to Kentucky, into the 
 strong, awkward, eager arms of young 
 Thomas Lincoln. 
 
 "Careful, Tom; the little maid is asleep," 
 cautioned the father. "Since we got her 
 away from the redskin devils back on the 
 
 3
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 trail a month ago, she starts in her rest to 
 fair break your heart." 
 
 Even at her father s low-voiced caution 
 the long black lashes lifted from the big 
 purple eyes, which were as dark as the twi 
 light shadows coming down through the 
 branches of the tall oaks that hovered the 
 Lincoln cabin, and a little shudder began 
 to thrill through the small body, which sub 
 sided at the cradling of the boy s strong 
 arms. 
 
 "Hush-e, hush-e, honey bird," the boy 
 crooned in a voice of the husky softness of 
 adolescence, as he hugged her closer with 
 a strange hunger in his serious, strong face, 
 with its dark eyes and square jaw, sur 
 mounted by a shock of black hair. 
 
 Young Nancy took one look at her pro 
 tector, snuggled her head close under his 
 chin, and fairly melted away into the depths 
 of sleep. 
 
 "They ain t no kind of baby Tom won t 
 
 4
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 mother, from a nigger to a skunk," said 
 Mordecai Lincoln, as he watched the boy go 
 slowly, crooning to his burden, into the 
 cabin. "Since Pa and Ma died last year, 
 looks like his grieving has sorter set him on 
 pitiful things." 
 
 "He can t look after my Nancy none too 
 perticular, since we so near lost her," an 
 swered big Joseph Hanks, as he followed 
 the boy and the child with keen, watchful, 
 tender eyes. "Here, Mother Nannie, let me 
 help you light. Give mother a hand on the 
 other side, Mort; she s stiff from the long 
 setting of this month s journey from Vir 
 ginia." 
 
 "I make you a hearty welcome, Aunt 
 Nancy, and I hope this house we built fer 
 you here in Kentucky will suit your no 
 tions," said Mordecai, as he carefully helped 
 his aunt down from the high seat on a weary 
 mule, back of the pack saddle from which 
 sleeping Nancy had been lifted. 
 
 5
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "I 11 ask for nothing more than strong 
 bars to the doors and windows from the 
 Indian murderers that killed your Aunt 
 Sarah Mitchell and stole her little Sarah a 
 month gone," answered the pioneer woman 
 in a firm voice that had in it all the sadness 
 of bereavement but no tears. 
 
 "That you 11 have, Aunt Nancy, and mus 
 kets always on the trigger fer you and yourn. 
 But there are most too many of us in this 
 settlement for the red devils to bother us, 
 any more now. They ain t raided since they 
 killed Pa and we got five out of six of em," 
 big Mordecai reassured her. 
 
 "I pray God it may be so," answered the 
 mother of Nancy, as she gave a last look 
 back into the savage-infested forest through 
 which she had come, passed the mules of the 
 caravan which her husband was beginning 
 to have unloaded, and went down the path 
 through the clearing into the home they had 
 built in the wilderness for her. 
 
 6
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 That night there was a gathering of the 
 Lincoln and Hanks clan in the new Hanks 
 home, in front of the wide fireplace in which 
 was now smoldering only a small spring fire 
 of fragrant cedar chips, though into the 
 wide, dark cavern there could be piled a half 
 wagonload of logs against the chill of win 
 ter snow. 
 
 At one side of the fireplace sat huge Mor- 
 decai Lincoln with his long gun between his 
 knees, telling his uncle Joseph Hanks the 
 particulars of the death of his father, follow 
 ing whose lead Joseph, with his three broth 
 ers-in-law, Berry, Sparrow, and Mitchell, 
 had come out from Virginia to pioneer into 
 the lush bluegrass valleys of the Dark and 
 Bloody Ground. Richard and Lucy Berry 
 s:it beside him, listening and talking, eager 
 to hear it all at once, for they were to go on 
 farther into the wilderness to their cabin 
 which had been built on a rich land claim 
 at Beechland by Beach Fork River. 
 
 7
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Mother Nancy was moving swiftly about the 
 room, still settling her household goods 
 though joining in and directing the conver 
 sation ; and over in the corner by the flicker 
 ing light crouched Tom Lincoln, close to the 
 rude cot of split cedar rails on whose inter 
 laced cords was swung the feather bed, in 
 which slept wee Nancy. A group of Berry 
 and Hanks boys sat on the floor beyond him, 
 listening eagerly to the talk of the men, 
 while Betsy and Polly Hanks and Nancy 
 Sparrow crouched opposite, knitting in the 
 firelight. 
 
 "Pa had gone out into the clearing with 
 Josiah and both of em had set their muskets 
 against a tree about fifty feet from the one 
 they was felling, which they ought not to 
 have done. I had turned back to the house, 
 when the six red devils came outen the woods 
 and and done for Pa." Mordecai was re 
 lating with the dignified quiet of the pioneer 
 when under any strain of emotion. "Josiah 
 
 8
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 seen them split Pa s head open and he fought 
 himself loose from em and run. He got 
 away; but after Ma died from grieving, in 
 a little less than three months, Josh could n t 
 stand living in the sight of that clearing and 
 he went West. Pie lowed to kill redskins 
 as he w r ent and I reckon he did." 
 
 "It was the same way with Brother 
 Mitchell," said Joseph Hanks with a huski- 
 ness in his throat, and a hard glint in his 
 eyes as he heard this simple story of the 
 murder of his brother-in-law by the savages, 
 who had so nearly stolen from him his own 
 treasure, sleeping warm and safe across the 
 hearth from him. "After they had killed 
 Sister Sarah and tooken Sarah, about as big 
 as Nancy there, who somehow got back, 
 Mitchell, he give the two boy children to their 
 Uncle and Aunt Berry and lit out to follow 
 and kill. He 11 do it shore." 
 
 "How d the redskins git at a big party 
 like you alls, Uncle Jo?" asked Mordecai. 
 
 9
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "With you and Uncle Dick Berry and Tom 
 Sparrow, and the boys they must a-been ten 
 men." 
 
 "We was fools, that s how," answer Jos 
 eph as he took a twist of Virginia tobacco 
 from his pocket, cut a quid for both Mordecai 
 and Tom Sparrow, also one for Richard 
 Berry, which was refused, before he put one 
 into his own square jaw. "We was all 
 camped down for the night by that clear 
 spring at the foot hill just after you come 
 through the big Gap. We d killed a young 
 deer, had venison roast fer supper, et heavy 
 and was all tired out. Mother here had put 
 Nancy and Sarah to bed next a pillion fur- 
 therest from the fire on account of wanting 
 em to go to sleep away from the talking. 
 After we was all bedded, here the Injuns 
 come down on us ! We had n t noticed 
 nothing." 
 
 "Yes, w r e had noticed one thing," inter 
 rupted Richard Berry, as Joseph spat ex- 
 
 10
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 pertly into the left-hand corner of the chim 
 ney farthest from him. "As I came back 
 from seeing to the ox teams I heard an owl 
 hoot in a most strange manner, and I told 
 Jo that it gave me the creeps. Did n t I, 
 Jo?" 
 
 "That was about the hundredth and sixth 
 owl you had got creeps from since you 
 started, Brother Berry," answered Joseph as 
 he crossed fire in tobacco juice with Mor- 
 decai Lincoln. 
 
 "That s it, sir, the man who knows noth 
 ing knows all," declared Brother Berry with 
 genial acidity as he took out a huge gold 
 snuff box, and by the use of the contents 
 procured for himself an equally huge sneeze. 
 Richard Berry, being both a philosopher and 
 a man of comparative wealth, was regarded 
 with respectful esteem by the entire family, 
 though he was at all times in friendly dis 
 cord with his brother-in-law, Joseph Hanks. 
 
 "You were telling Mort about the raid, 
 11
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Joseph," prompted Mother Nancy with pa 
 cific intent as she gave satisfied glances into 
 the fours corners of the large cabin at all 
 the pillowed young Hanks heads beside 
 which were laid Mitchell orphans and a few 
 Sparrows in the split-rail beds. 
 
 "Was I a-telling it or Brother Berry?" 
 was Joseph s belligerent answer. 
 
 "Go on with the narrative, Brother 
 Hanks," urged Mr. Berry courteously, 
 though gaining the victory with the one 
 erudite word which Joseph Hanks scorned 
 to notice. 
 
 "As I was a-saying when cut off, we 
 had n t noticed nothing and in the dead of 
 night they lit on us with a yell. I kicked 
 the chunks of fire together, and I seen a big 
 Indian right by Sister Sarah Mitchell and 
 the hardy pioneer s words faltered and Lucy 
 Berry s soft voice took up the story with a 
 little sob: 
 
 "She didn t suffer none, Mort, and she
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 died before she knew about about Sarah 
 being stole away." 
 
 "We killed two and lit out after em as 
 far as we dared go from the wimmen and 
 children in the dark," continued Joseph with 
 hard lines across his mouth. "It was a 
 whole hour before we found they had taken 
 the two little girls. God, Mort, when I 
 found my baby Nancy gone I 
 
 But here an interruption occurred in the 
 tragic story; small Xancy suddenly sat up 
 in her rude bed and began to sob, looking 
 wildly about in the half light. Quickly her 
 mother started to her, her father half rose 
 from his seat, and Richard Berry was about 
 to ponderously cross the hearth in her direc 
 tion when she was gathered into Tom Lin 
 coln s strong arms before any of them could 
 reach her. 
 
 "Hush-e, hush-e, honey bird," he crooned 
 with his cheek on hers; and again his charm 
 worked. To the astonishment of the rest of 
 
 13
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 the sympathetic party the long lashes almost 
 instantly fell over the wild purple eyes and 
 the frightened mite nestled back into the 
 arms she had already learned to trust. 
 
 "That s the first time she ain t had a bad 
 crying spell when she waked up since that 
 morning she crawled back into camp. We 
 have n t ever been able to ask her about how 
 she got aloose cause she begins to tremble 
 and cry for Sarah, that she loved as a sister, 
 if she was only a cousin. We just have to 
 tole her along not to think about it any 
 more," said her father in an undertone, as 
 they all sat quietly and watched the big awk 
 ward boy rock and croon over the five-year- 
 old. 
 
 "Tom sure has got her pacified. Let s 
 let him take her home with him, father," said 
 William Hanks, a big strapping young 
 pioneer of twenty years, with a brotherly 
 twinkle in his eyes, as he looked at the small 
 sleeping girl in Tom Lincoln s arms. 
 
 14
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Rather have her than a skunk kitten, 
 Tom?" questioned Xed Berry, a swaggering 
 sixteen-year-old boy with bright blue eyes, 
 a thatch of gold hair and almost as tall as 
 his father. 
 
 A quick, rare smile spread across young 
 Thomas bashful face as he went on with his 
 crooning and rocking. 
 
 "She won t be skeered any more after I 
 git her tamed," he whispered. 
 
 "Taming a woman is a job that begins 
 again as soon as it ends, Thomas," observed 
 Mr. Berry over his snuff box as the men be 
 gan to collect their rifles quietly, preparatory 
 to betaking themselves to the hay mow in 
 the field, as the cabins would be needed for 
 the feminine and juvenile members of the 
 family party, until the Berry s and the Spar 
 rows should move on to their cabins at 
 Beechland. The taming of Xancy Hanks 
 was never accomplished by Thomas Lincoln 
 or the world at large. 
 
 15
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Perhaps, when offered the choice, it would 
 have been wiser for Tom to have chosen the 
 guardianship and education of the skunk kit 
 ten, rather than the position of protector to 
 small Nancy, for she proved a veritable will- 
 o -the-wisp to him, and before she was done 
 with him, beckoned him into far places. 
 
 "Go to Tom, Nancy," became, as the days, 
 weeks and months passed, a veritable slogan 
 in the Hanks cabin, teeming with and run 
 ning over as it was with pioneer life and 
 activity. 
 
 "I don t see how I could make out if Tom 
 did n t keep Nancy safe and pacified so much 
 of the time," sighed Mother Hanks as she, 
 her daughters, Betsy and Polly, and one 
 of the frying-size boys began on the weekly 
 task of dipping candles in deer and bear tal 
 low they had rendered in the huge iron ket 
 tle in the open. 
 
 "I m mighty glad she don t tag me like 
 she does Tom," young Jo Hanks congrat- 
 
 16
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 ulated himself as he shoved a fat pine chunk 
 farther under the big steaming kettle. 
 
 "Xancy gits her way and goes it," ob 
 served Polly Hanks as she dipped a row of 
 six strong cotton cords, fastened in a line on 
 a cedar slab into the kettle of melted tallow, 
 and waved them in the air to let the grease 
 harden, by repeating which process she was 
 as sure to evolve six straight and sightly 
 candles as was the old red sun to set just as 
 the time for lighting them would arrive. 
 "She et five fried apple pies for her dinner 
 and looks like her stomick could n t er held 
 more than two under her apron. I did n t 
 want to give em to her but was afraid not 
 to." 
 
 "She tooken three of em to Tom, I seen 
 her give em to him. His sister Susie don t 
 give him but two for his dinner. She ain t 
 his mother," observed young Hanks as he 
 again fed the chunks to the fire under the 
 candle factory. 
 
 17
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Nobody but mothers understand rightly 
 that boys are hollow from hoofs to horns," 
 observed Mother Hanks as she gave her row 
 of candles the tenth dip and wave, which 
 brought them to about the size of a slate pen 
 cil. "I must look more careful after Tom s 
 fodder. I don t think Mordecai s wife is 
 child wise and his good mother has gone on 
 before." 
 
 "Keep her soul, Lord Jesus," said tall 
 Betsy Hanks devoutly. 
 
 "Amen!" answered Mother Hanks as she 
 went on with her dipping. 
 
 Pioneer women had need to lean heavily 
 on the "everlasting arms." 
 
 And for more things than the tending of 
 small Nancy could Thomas Lincoln be de 
 pended upon. 
 
 From his earliest years Tom had been a 
 passionate woodsman, and he knew his Ken 
 tucky forests as well as any redskin on the 
 Dark and Bloody Ground, and loved them 
 
 18
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 as well. Pie watched all the trees and 
 bushes through their spring budding, their 
 summer leafing, past their gaudy autumn 
 parade to their winter starkness, and knew 
 accurately what their processes would yield 
 in food, fuel and clothing for man and beast. 
 The entire Lincoln household counted on the 
 great piles of hickory and walnuts that Tom 
 gathered, hulled, sunned and stored, while the 
 autumn sun shone, against the long nights 
 by the big winter fires. Day after day he 
 brought in great branches of elderberry for 
 wine, and long vines of wild grape for jelly, 
 the sugar for which he obtained in the spring 
 from tapping the tall maple trees ; and only 
 Tom knew how to select the ears of Indian 
 corn that would pop into white kernels on 
 the hot stones before the fire. 
 
 "Bird, beast and root, Tom could make his 
 living if you turned him loose in the woods," 
 his brother Mordecai remarked boastfully 
 to his uncle Jo Hanks, though the guard- 
 
 19
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 lanship of young Thomas, which had fallen 
 upon his shoulders at the death of his par 
 ents, sat lightly upon him. 
 
 "Why don t you teach him to read?" his 
 uncle Joseph asked, as he steadied a tall 
 cedar post that huge Mordecai was raising 
 upon which to nail the timbers for a new 
 shack. 
 
 "Got no time to fool with him. He s all 
 right; as long as a boy has rabbit and bear 
 and turkey track to set his traps by, he don t 
 need to read and write books." This educa 
 tional value was decided by the own uncle 
 of the man who less than a century later de 
 livered an address at Gettysburg which is 
 the foundation stone upon which rests Amer 
 ican literature. 
 
 "Shoo, Nancy knows her a-b s right now, 
 and says em to me every night. She is 
 going to graduate to c-a-t tonight if I get 
 home in time," bragged Joseph, the father 
 of Nancy, as he tramped the dirt tight 
 
 20
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 around the pole, while Mordecai went on to 
 another. 
 
 "Well, Xancy can read Tom s cats to 
 him and let him keep to the turkey tracks," 
 Mordecai answered, as he bent his broad 
 back to the raising of a pole that it would 
 take four of his descendants to lift from the 
 ground. 
 
 Thus arbitrarily was dismissed the educa 
 tion of Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abra 
 ham. 
 
 Pioneer life is hard at its best, and is there 
 not some excuse for not setting a getter of 
 rations at spelling book and pot hooks, when 
 the family pot is always in danger of show 
 ing an empty bottom!- It is just not to re 
 sent the fact that Thomas Lincoln was 
 forced to spend a great part of his life in 
 the woods tracking and trapping, until the 
 advent into his life of Xancy Hanks, who 
 had herself been tracked and trapped. 
 
 21
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AND the arrival of Nancy Hanks into 
 the trapping profession of Tom Lin 
 coln on a July morning was with the cy 
 clonic violence of cloud and tear burst fol 
 lowed by sunshine. It happened in this way. 
 A half mile down on Lincoln Creek, Tom 
 had set his traps to catch young frying size 
 turkeys, which begin to run free about the 
 last of June. He had been urged to an 
 early trapping because Jo and Bill Hanks 
 had been out for deer two days before and 
 had come in with six of the young bronze 
 poults hanging from their belts. That night 
 Mother Hanks had had a great wild turkey 
 fry and Nancy had run down the dirt road 
 to the Lincoln house to summon Tom, as was 
 
 22
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 her habit when ever the huge fire in the little 
 lean-to log kitchen of her own abode gave 
 forth what seemed to her a particularly at 
 tractive odor. 
 
 "Better feed him some of that c-a-t outen 
 your spelling book, Nancy, instead of fried 
 turkey," teased huge Mordecai, as he 
 pushed his rush-bottomed chair back from 
 his own scoured table, which had been split 
 with an axe out of a cedar tree that had 
 grown a century for that utilitarian pur 
 pose. 
 
 "Not me, never," retorted Tom, as he 
 wiped his mouth on his hickory shirt sleeve. 
 "Reading is for girls." 
 
 "Or maybe he d eat a little d-o-g for you, 
 Nancy," jeered Mordecai s wife, Susie, as 
 she polished the grease off a bunch of small 
 Lincoln countenances with the end of a 
 homespun towel, wet from a gourd dipped in 
 the cedar piggin of water by the door. 
 
 "Hush up your mouth, Cousin Susie," 
 
 3
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 flamed back Nancy with rage, fairly snap 
 ping from the black fringed violet eyes at 
 what her six years was able to recognize as 
 an insult to her beloved protector. 
 
 "Don t talk mean to Tom. My mother 
 says always save the liver wing for him 
 cause his mother is dead. 
 
 "Jest listen to the sass-box," further 
 jeered the rough young pioneer woman, as 
 she began to bed her two-headed brood. 
 
 "Shoo, Susie, let the little maid be," cau 
 tioned Mordecai, "don t you know that she s 
 Uncle Jo and Aunt Nancy s pie-child since 
 the redskins almost got her? Here, Nancy, 
 take a slab of Cousin Susie s sweet cake with 
 hickory nuts in it." As he spoke he held 
 out a slice of the delicacy to the important 
 and offended young relative. 
 
 For a moment Nancy eyed the offered 
 appeasement haughtily, then the sunshine 
 broke over her face, curled the young lips 
 into a moist rose bud flanked with rippling 
 
 24
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 dimples, and she held out her brown, briar- 
 scratehed little hand with a gurgle of joy. 
 
 "Thank you, Cousin Susie," she said with 
 a funny little bob and back step of one dusty 
 stump-toed foot, which was a pioneer ver 
 sion of a curtsey brought with other gentle 
 traditions by Mother Hanks from Virginia. 
 
 Mordecai laughed heartily at the tactful 
 assault on his rough and tumble wife, who se 
 cretly adored the dainty young lady cousin, 
 and was determinedly modelling the tow 
 heads upon her pattern. 
 
 "Ain t she the beauty though," observed 
 big Mordecai, as he watched Nancy go down 
 the road hand in hand with burly, awkward 
 Tom in his hickory shirt and butternut jeans 
 trousers, with rawhide suspenders holding 
 them together. "She split that slab of cake 
 with Tom in justice and they is both a- 
 munching away fer dear life." 
 
 "She sure have got a way with you men 
 folks and boys. You notice her against her 
 
 25
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 own good," rough Susan began to complain. 
 
 "Here, let me tote a couple of buckets of 
 water from the spring fer you," Mordecai 
 offered as a price for escape from a scold 
 ing, the like of which he had encoantered be 
 fore. Susan s vicious jealousy was a fire 
 that smouldered to blaze at the slightest 
 provocation and the atmosphere of her 
 household was often sultry from the con 
 flagration. 
 
 "You re soft about both Tom and Nancy 
 and you d better keep it for your own chil 
 dren and me," she grumbled after his re 
 treating figure. 
 
 "Well, you make it hard enough for Tom 
 with Ma gone," Mordecai ventured back 
 from a safe distance, then went whistling on 
 his way. 
 
 Susan s blaze flared on the kitchen thresh 
 old. 
 
 "Git your supper outen the skillet and git 
 out of my sight," she commanded a little 
 
 26
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 double jointed, round headed negro boy by 
 name Runt, whose mother, in a high red 
 cotton turban, was shifting the pots and skil 
 lets in the big fireplace. The Lincoln 
 mother had brought Mammy Jude and her 
 family from Virginia with her, and while the 
 black woman and her husband and children 
 had gone with the land to big Mordecai, 
 after the English first-son custom, to which 
 Virginians held for many generations, to 
 Tom had been given the little Runt. 
 
 On her death bed, to which she had taken 
 after seeing her husband brought home from 
 the murdering Indians, gentle Mary Lin 
 coln had said to Mordecai : 
 
 "Give Tom Jude s Runt. He s pitiful 
 in nature and will look after the poor 
 thing." 
 
 "All right, Ma," Mordecai had answered, 
 and Mordecai Lincoln s word was as good 
 as any man s word or bond. The Runt was 
 Tom s property. 
 
 27
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 But being "Tom s nigger" often brought 
 the hand of Susan down heavily upon the 
 fate of Runt. He knew when to vanish 
 into thin air. 
 
 The turkey fry at Mother Hanks could 
 have been fairly called a successful repast, 
 and Nancy gathered a pile of drum bones, a 
 few wings and a back to give on a clean 
 cedar chip to the Runt, who at all times 
 squatted beside the door of any interior 
 which contained his master, Tom. 
 
 "Runt," said Tom, as he came to the door. 
 "We 11 set snares tonight. These Hankses 
 beat us onct, but we 11 ketch up with em and 
 get a dozen poults fer Aunt Nancy tomor 
 row." 
 
 "We shure will," answered the Runt with 
 a grin nearly a foot wide as Nancy reap 
 peared in the back door beside Tom with a 
 slice of bread and brown sugar for him. 
 
 "Nice little Runt," she said, as she 
 watched the dainty feed the grin. 
 
 28
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 The Runt s smile was sugared adoration. 
 
 It was on the following day that Tom and 
 the Runt got into trouble with young Nancy. 
 
 It happened on the edge of the forest 
 where they had set their snares in the dead 
 of night and it perhaps was the spark that 
 started the conflagration of 1861. 
 
 "Glory, Mars Tom, they is three in this 
 pen and hit is the furst one. We 11 shore 
 git our dozen fer Miss Nancy ter day," 
 chuckled the Runt as he knelt by the square 
 prison, made of latticed cedar sticks which 
 had fallen upon the three beautiful bronze 
 wild things when they hopped on the spring, 
 while feeding on the corn he had spread 
 cunningly thereunder. Runt was as captive 
 as they, only did n t realize it and failed to 
 beat against the custom that caged him as 
 they beat their bronze wings and breasts 
 against the cedar sticks. 
 
 "We 11 just tie their feet together and go 
 get the others further down stream and kill 
 
 29
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 em all at onct," directed Tom as he bent to 
 examine his catch. "They shore are fat and 
 Aunt Nancy will 
 
 And then the volcano whirled into the sit 
 uation. 
 
 Small Nancy splashed across the creek 
 upon her usual adventure of tagging Tom, 
 and stood beside the two boys kneeling upon 
 the ground, tying the feet of the young tur 
 keys. 
 
 "I saw you a-going, Tom Lincoln, with 
 out me and then I had to come to find you 
 and what is that, Tom?" 
 
 The child had put her arm around Tom s 
 neck and bent to see what it was in which he 
 and Runt were so absorbed with excited in 
 terest, and then suddenly she stood erect 
 with horror freezing her laughing face. 
 
 "What is it, Tom?" she asked again, with 
 a flutter in her throat. 
 
 "It s a snare we Ve trapped some poults 
 in fer supper, honey bird," Tom answered. 
 
 30
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "We are going to tie their legs and take em 
 home to kill." 
 
 "No, Tom, no ! Let em go quick, quick !" 
 Nancy suddenly wailed as she stood shud 
 dering with her face in her hands. "I can t 
 stand it, Tom, let em go." 
 
 "But you et poults that Bill and Jo shot 
 for supper last night, Nancy," remon 
 strated Tom, while Runt sat back on his 
 bare feet and rolled his big eyes with help 
 less astonishment as this battle, which was 
 to be for his ultimate freedom, began. 
 "I m the champeen trapper and hunter 
 hereabouts and you don t want em to shame 
 me, do you?" 
 
 "Them poults was killed when they did n t 
 know it, Tom. They was n t tied. Let em 
 go, let em go. I can t stand it. Nobody 
 otighter tie nothing alive." 
 
 "But, Nancy, honey, we are going to 
 
 At this Nancy took her hands down from 
 her white little face in which her violet eyes 
 
 31
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 blazed with a great fire, while her small body 
 shook from her bare stumped toes to the 
 crown of her red-brown hair, and the wound 
 in her own bosom was laid bare and began 
 to flow for the saving of the small forest cap 
 tives of the present, and perhaps for the 
 liberation of a multitude in the distant fu 
 ture. Fear had been dammed up in her 
 childish heart and had eaten into her vitals. 
 Now the gates of her emotions were opened. 
 "Let em go, Tom, let em go," she wailed. 
 "That Indian what carried me away in the 
 night over his shoulder, he put his hand on 
 my throat and squeezed it so I could n t call 
 Daddy. He walked and he walked and he 
 walked in the dark right towards a big star, 
 and then he stopped and and and he tied 
 Sarah and me with ropes to a tree while 
 they all drinked outen bottles and went to 
 sleep. Sarah cried and cried but I I jest 
 gnawed and gnawed at that rope until I got 
 loose. I put my back to the star and runned 
 
 32
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 and runned, while the Indian was asleep, 
 and got back to my Daddy and Mother, but, 
 oh Tom, Sarah is still tied and crying. 
 Xothing in this world ought to be tied. Let 
 em go free, Tom, let em go free." 
 
 The dark eyes in the somber boy s face 
 caught fire from the flame in those of the 
 small woman above him, and with a twist he 
 snapped the bit of hemp cord and threw the 
 poults high into the air. 
 
 "Lordy!" yelled the black, not taking in 
 the situation, though it touched him most 
 nearly. 
 
 "Go turn em all out of the snares, Runt," 
 Tom said quietly. "We 11 take the guns 
 and go see how many we can shoot on the 
 wing." 
 
 "And never shut up and tie no more, 
 Tom?" Xancy questioned, with a radiance 
 breaking all over her storm-tossed little face. 
 "Oh, Tom!" With which she clung to him 
 fiercely and pressed her face against his 
 
 33
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 hickory shirt just about at the height of the 
 tender heart in his left breast. 
 
 "Because you was tied I 11 never tie 
 nothin again, Nancy," Tom answered, and 
 with which vow he took upon himself a fate 
 that followed him even until his three-score 
 and tenth year. "Now go on home, while I 
 stand here and watch you. You know you 
 ain t lowed this far in the clearing without 
 nobody watching you. We got to do some 
 hunting today or git beat by the Hankses." 
 
 "I 11 go back, but don t you never again 
 go nowhere without asking me if you kin. 
 I m going to always follow you," was the 
 autocratic answer, as young Nancy pre 
 pared to take her departure, thoroughly her 
 self again. 
 
 "Well, git," answered Tom with an in 
 dulgent twinkle in his grave eyes, that came 
 only at his small charge s most outrageous 
 demands. "When you git big enough to 
 wear a apron, you kin tie me to its strings." 
 
 84
 
 "Hush your mouth," flung back Nancy, 
 making spray fly as she splashed across the 
 creek. 
 
 "Aunt Nancy said you had to learn two 
 Bible verses if you said that sass to anybody 
 again," Tom called across to the bank on 
 which Nancy stood, poised for a barefoot 
 flight down the road towards the Hanks 
 cabins in the distance. 
 
 "Well, you ain t anybody," was the an 
 swer flung at him over a flying shoulder. 
 
 "Huh-who-huh," guffawed Runt from a 
 little distance in the clearing. 
 
 "You come on with that gun if you low 
 for us to git more than any dozen poults this 
 day," commanded Tom. With which he 
 and his bondman disappeared into the wil 
 derness. 
 
 The day s bag was fourteen poults shot 
 on the wing and the Lincoln records were 
 again safe. 
 
 "What made you shoot all day instead of 
 
 35
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 snaring what you could have done in an 
 hour or two, Tom?" questioned big Morde- 
 cai, who had come over to his aunt s for 
 supper at the news of this second turkey fry, 
 bringing Susan and one of her nut cakes 
 with him. 
 
 Joseph Hanks, young Jo, Billy, Mor- 
 decai, and the other boys were taking their 
 ease in the twilight with their rush-bottomed 
 chairs tilted back against the front of the 
 cabin. Mother Hanks sat in her rocker and 
 Susan Lincoln and Polly sat on a bench un 
 der the huge oak roof trees knitting, while 
 Betsy within was putting the household in 
 order for bedding. There was also a guest 
 of honor for the occasion, as Richard Berry 
 had ridden over from Beechland, bringing 
 saddlebags of gifts from sister to sister and 
 a head full of news and contentions, the lat 
 ter especially for his beloved brother-in-law, 
 Joseph Hanks. He sat in a large arm-chair 
 and Nancy, his beloved, sat upon his knee, 
 
 36
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 while Tom Lincoln lounged on the ground 
 near by, with Runt crouched in the shadow 
 back of him. 
 
 "Yes, w^hat did you shoot fer, Tom, with 
 powder as skeerce as you know it is?" Susan 
 quarreled at the boy, thus scarring Tom s 
 moment of triumph with her sordid ill tem 
 per and dislike. 
 
 "Shoo, Susie, don t ja\v the lad when he s 
 made a record of six above any man s in the 
 settlement," admonished Richard Berry, he 
 being the only person present who dared to 
 take issue with Susan s bad temper. "Your 
 nigger did n t shoot none for you, did he, 
 Tom?" he joked. 
 
 "I d jest like to see anybody in this set 
 tlement dignify a nigger with a gun," Susan 
 snapped, in spite of the curb put upon her by 
 the revered brother-in-law, Berry. 
 
 "No, sir, Runt can t shoot," answered 
 Tom. 
 
 "You 11 both git back to your trapping 
 37
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 after this show off with valuable gun pow 
 der," growled Susan. 
 
 "Tom ain t never going to trap nothing 
 alive any more. He promised me," an 
 nounced small Nancy from her perch upon 
 the august Berry knee. 
 
 "Well, I reckon the Lincoln family will 
 starve next winter f er rabbit stew if you say 
 so, Nancy," jeered Susan. 
 
 "Hush your mouth, Cousin Susie yes, 
 Mother, I 11 learn three verses of the Bible 
 for the sass and don t say Tom will any 
 more tie up and trap things. No big In 
 dian ever squeezed your throat and tied you 
 with a rope you had to gnaw to git back to 
 your Daddy and your uncle Berry. Oh, 
 say, Tom won t have to tie em any more, 
 Uncle Berry," with which the small cham 
 pion of liberty began to tremble and cling 
 to the head of the family with his gold snuff 
 box. 
 
 "Praise God she has spoken out and 
 
 38
 
 maybe we can hear something about little 
 Sarah," ejaculated Mother Hanks. 
 
 "Sarah cried and cried while I gnawed 
 the rope. She would n t gnaw," Nancy 
 sat up and said with a flame in her eyes. 
 "A man Indian wanted to slap her but a 
 woman Indian would n t let him." 
 
 "I reckon mother hearts are about the 
 same size, white or red," ejaculated Mother 
 Hanks, clasping her hands with their knit 
 ting needles to her bosom. "I pray protec 
 tion for the child if alive from the dear 
 Lord." 
 
 "Amen, Sister Nancy," answered Mr. 
 Berry devoutly. 
 
 "Because I was tied, me and Tom ain t 
 never going to tie things," intrepid Nancy 
 continued shrewdly, determined to have the 
 matter out in family council, while she would 
 have the weight of Uncle Berry s opinion on 
 her side as she was sure from former expe 
 riences it would be cast. 
 
 39
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "The question of human freedom is agita 
 ting the United States just about as much 
 as the question of animal liberty is rippling 
 the surface of our family circle," Mr. Berry 
 declaimed over his gold snuff box, thus 
 suavely covering the minor particular ques 
 tion with the larger, general one. "I see 
 the Massachusetts State is for selling the 
 blacks into the Southern colonies and free 
 ing their consciences while filling their pock- 
 etbooks. The blacks die in Massachusetts." 
 
 "We 11 take em all," said Joseph Hanks, 
 surveying his clearing which was beginning 
 to stretch deep into the primeval forest. "I 
 am thinking to buy two good bucks before 
 snow flies." 
 
 "A trader came into Beechland last month 
 and I bought a likely black boy six feet two 
 for six hundred dollars. He ran away and 
 caught up with the trader before morning," 
 Mr. Berry related, after a pinch of snuff and 
 its results. 
 
 40
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "What did you do?" 
 
 "Brought him back and confined him a 
 few days!" The big* word got past small 
 Xancy on his knee trying to listen but nod 
 ding drowsily. 
 
 "Did it work?" 
 
 "Yes, after Lucy had made me ride a day 
 and a night to buy his wife and two yearling 
 pickaninnies from the trader at four hun 
 dred and fifty. Got em both working out 
 a cotton patch and the louder they sing the 
 faster they work. They are as fat and 
 happy as chipmunks. Here, Tom, take 
 your baby into the house, she s fast asleep." 
 
 "Yes, take her, Tom, she won t know it if 
 you move her, and 1 don t want her to wake 
 and cry for Sarah," said Mother Hanks as 
 her needles began to fly again. 
 
 Tom reached up and took small Nancy 
 into his arms, but instead of carrying her 
 in to bed, he cradled her on his knees and 
 listened to the rest of the conversation as it 
 
 41
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 meandered over the question of the right or 
 wrong of human liberty. 
 
 "Well, I low I 11 be able to keep two 
 bucks if I git em," drawled Joseph Hanks. 
 
 "Well, I must say I sorter sympathize in 
 my conscience with Massachusetts about 
 freedom, but my tobacco and cotton have 
 got to be worked," said Mr. Berry. "I 
 can t feel like the Lord intended us to buy 
 and sell human beings." 
 
 "That ain t the way to look at it, Brother 
 Berry," Joseph Hanks answered as he 
 rolled a quid of tobacco in his mouth. "He 
 brought em outen savage lands fer us to 
 make human beings of and we Ve got to 
 have the say over em same as our children, 
 cause they have got no more sense than chil 
 dren." 
 
 "Then if it s right for Uncle Berry to tie 
 up and buy and sell his nigger, it is right for 
 you to tie up and buy and sell me, which it 
 ain t. Ever} r body oughter be free of every- 
 
 42
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 body." Tom Lincoln s quiet voice, in 
 which the deep tones of a man made a bass 
 for the soprano notes that still lingered from 
 his boyhood, cut into the conversation. As 
 he spoke, Xancy stirred in his arms and he 
 rose and took her into the house away from 
 the argument. 
 
 "That boy has got more curious notions 
 than a dominicker hen has got stripes, and 
 he s jest as techy as she is when setting," 
 observed young Jo Hanks. "Not trapping 
 cause Xancy don t want him to, huh?" 
 
 "Well, if Xancy don t want him to he 
 ain t a-going to if it reminds her of In 
 dians," decided big Mordecai with shrewd 
 indulgence, for he was mindful of the fact 
 that he \vas to enter a triangle mule deal 
 with his uncles Hanks and Berry in the 
 morning and he wanted them unruffled by 
 trouble with the mutual apple of their eyes. 
 "Runt can do the trapping and keep it outer 
 Xancy s sight. Tom s big enough for 
 
 48
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 learning carpentering with Joe here, any 
 way." 
 
 "Yes, I d like to learn him on that new 
 barn we all are going to raise next week," 
 said young Jo with a shrewd twinkle in his 
 eyes, very like his father s. "Tom is as big 
 and strong as any man now, if only sixteen. 
 Wanter work with me, Tom?" While he 
 was speaking Tom had deposited Nancy in 
 her sister Betsy s care and returned to the 
 family conclave. 
 
 "Yes," answered Tom quietly, thus re 
 nouncing for himself the freedom of a 
 woodsman to tie himself to a carpenter s 
 bench because of his promise to the cause of 
 freedom he had given Nancy Hanks in the 
 sixth year of her existence, A. D. 1790.
 
 T 
 
 IME raced along with the years for 
 small Xancy Hanks on the fleet wings 
 of the wild geese driving north in the sum 
 mer and south in the winter. The blush of 
 pink-budded springs deepened to the flush 
 of golden and empurpled autumns. Sum 
 mers came and passed with seed time and 
 harvests. The fields were now once and 
 again in bloom with delicate daisy-like wild 
 flowers which follow the wake of the cradlers 
 of grain. The zig-zag worm-like fences of 
 rails, dividing the fields, fenced in their cor 
 ners riots of crimson vines, and tall regi 
 ments of golden rod that defied the autumns 
 and the harvests until the snow flurries of 
 winter seared them and laid them low. 
 The small Nancy waxed strong and grew; 
 
 45
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 how she grew ! The little settlement on Lin 
 coln Creek, which had grown with her 
 growth into a hamlet of a score or more 
 houses with a log tavern for passers on the 
 Wilderness Trail, and a clapboarded roofed 
 church, marveled with pride in her prowess 
 and spoiled her as if she w r ere some young 
 princess of the royal blood. 
 
 "Yes, Miss Nancy is training me to train 
 vines in my sixtieth year with no regard to 
 my rheumatics at all," grumbled tall, lean 
 Mr. George Haskins, the tavern keeper, to 
 Elder Jesse Head, the Methodist Circuit 
 Rider, who sat on the front porch ne ar 
 the door. Mr. Haskins stood on an up 
 turned barrel and wound the tough shoots of 
 a scarlet trumpet vine over the doorway of 
 the log tavern, while nine-year-old Nancy 
 stood beneath him with strings, a hammer 
 and some sharp wooden pegs to use as nails. 
 
 "I think having vines all over houses is 
 like wearing Sunday clothes that don t cost 
 
 46
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 nothing," remarked young Nancy with 
 dancing eyes, as she reached up a peg and 
 the hammer to her victim, who was steady 
 ing himself against the cedar post on which 
 the sign "Log-Tavern" hung. "I m going 
 to bring you some camphor and bear grease 
 ointment to rub your back with, Mr. Has- 
 kins. Mother let me make it myself," 
 Nancy tendered in a spirit of fair trade. 
 
 "Is the grease outen that bear Tom Lin 
 coln shot last fall, when it was making off 
 with Brother Haskins heifer calf?" asked 
 the Circuit Rider with interest, for Tom s 
 exploit with the big brown marauder at 
 twenty paces, a last load in his old flint-lock 
 and with a damp powder-horn, had been the 
 epic of the rush-bottom-chair hunters con 
 claves for the entire past winter. 
 
 "Naw, Nancy hev rubbed all the grease 
 outen that bear on Tom s hair this winter fer 
 singin school, and then it has looked like 
 a wore-out twig broom at that," Mr. 
 
 47
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Haskins answered as he pounded in the peg 
 for the confining of the trumpeter. 
 
 "Last Sunday night at meeting Tom s 
 head was slick enough for a fly to slip up to 
 his death on. I testify to that myself," the 
 Circuit Rider hastened to say as he saw a 
 retort forming itself within Nancy which 
 might upset the trainer of the vines, for the 
 purple eyes were emitting flashes from back 
 of their black defenses that Elder Head and 
 Brother Haskins both knew to forerun a 
 storm. "Tom has got a great power in his 
 voice when he sings Rock of Ages with you 
 helping him, Nancy." 
 
 "Tom kinder got tangled in his tune when 
 he tried to sing outen the same book with 
 Sallie Bush at night services, her in that 
 dimity her father had brung all the way from 
 Philadelphia on mule pack," Mr. Haskins 
 observed as he drove the last peg and tied 
 the last string. "What about Tom and Sal- 
 lie, Nancy?" 
 
 48
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Oh, I think Sallie is jest beautiful in that 
 dress and I 11 let her sing with Tom all she 
 wants to," answered Xancy with feminine 
 rapture over the beautiful Sallie and her 
 apparel, thus evincing a generosity which 
 was most unfeminine. The heart of nine 
 years is usually as generous and sexless as 
 that of a white-feathered cherub. 
 
 It is to the credit of the tenderness in the 
 rough pioneer s heart that he winked at the 
 butternut-breeched divine under his roof 
 tree, and desisted in any attempt to make a 
 jealous rift in the lute of the small cherub 
 to whom he handed the hammer and nails. 
 
 "Well, if you keep Tom greased up well, 
 I reckon Sallie will be proper grateful to 
 you, Xancy; bear-greased hair is a good 
 courting aid," he observed with another 
 wink. "Any more jobs you want to put on 
 my poor back?" 
 
 "Xo, thank you, sir," answered Xancy 
 with a sudden resolve beginning to burn in 
 
 49
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 her purple eyes. "What else is good aids 
 on courting a beautiful young lady, Mr. 
 Raskins?" 
 
 "Waal, now, how about clean hands and 
 neck and ears and shirt, Brother Head?" 
 Mr. Haskins consulted the elder with great 
 gravity. 
 
 "Well said, Brother Haskins. well said," 
 assented Elder Head with a well-concealed 
 smile tugging at his lips, under his white 
 beard. 
 
 "Say, Mr. Haskins, I ve got to get home 
 quick, as it s most sundown, but I m going 
 to send Runt back with that camphor and 
 bear grease for your back. I 11 send a piece 
 of mother s old flannel petticoat to rub it 
 on hot, and Runt will help you as you ain t 
 married," Nancy said as she took her de 
 parture with an intention for action written 
 all over her small person. 
 
 "I suspect that poor Tom Lincoln is in 
 for a bodily regeneration," remarked Elder 
 
 50
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Head as Brother Haskins took a rush-bot 
 tomed chair beside his guest and tilted him 
 self against the log wall for the recuperation 
 of his powers after his decorative efforts. 
 
 "That Xancy Hanks is one of these here 
 pretty pink garden roses with a two-horse 
 power buzz-saw for a center," remarked Mr. 
 Haskins, as he rubbed his back with one 
 hand and looked after the little blue home 
 spun figure disappearing down the road to 
 wards the Hanks home, which had grown 
 from the one-room log cabin into which 
 Mother Hanks had arrived from the Wilder 
 ness, to a pretentious mass of log rooms all 
 covered by one low clapboard roof under 
 whose eaves doves were nesting in the trum 
 pet vines and wood-creeper. "She have got 
 this whole town roped and thrown where she 
 can set on it, Xancy has." 
 
 "Xancy uses her heart-strings for ropes, 
 Brother Haskins ; that s why they hold. 
 Heart strings bind a friend like an iron 
 
 51
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 band," the elder mused as his eyes also fol 
 lowed the retreating blue figure, which was 
 disappearing in a cloud of dust raised by the 
 fleet bare feet that bore Nancy rapidly on 
 her mission. 
 
 "True," answered Brother Haskins, and 
 reached for his tobacco twist. 
 
 The sun was just sinking behind the tree- 
 tops as Nancy darted past the house and 
 over to the Hanks carpenter shop, which 
 stood in a clump of tall oaks beside the creek 
 across the clearing. On her way she passed 
 her brother, broad Jo Hanks, going in from 
 his work with his leather apron still strapped 
 to his waist. He made a grab for the flee 
 ing small girl, caught her, swung her above 
 his head, kissed her, spanked her and re 
 leased her. 
 
 "Oh, Jo, can I get Tom now?" she de 
 manded rather than requested. 
 
 "Tom s finishin off a piggin for Mrs. 
 Hendricks and you d better let him be, for 
 
 52
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 the old lady gets het up if she s crossed." 
 "I 11 take it home to her if it s finished 
 late, and she won t say nothing but give me 
 a tea cake outen the box if I catch her round 
 the waist from behind fore she knows I m 
 there and skeer her." Nancy planned with 
 the assurance of long experience with her 
 peppery neighbor. 
 
 "Say, Nancy, don t you ever try to sneak 
 up on the devil that way, on account of his 
 forked tail," laughed big Jo, carefully edg 
 ing one of his huge bare feet over one of 
 Nancy s small toes which was adorned with 
 a dusty pink rag, and for his pains failed 
 to receive the alarmed wiggle for which he 
 was working. Nancy Hanks was filled with 
 a certainty that her small world intended 
 her no hurt, and could not be frightened 
 with any threat. 
 
 "What do you want with Tom now?" 
 he asked, as he ruffled her bronze 
 hair. 
 
 53
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "I want to fix him up pretty before sing 
 ing school tonight. It won t be more than 
 two hours, and please let me have him now, 
 Jo," pleaded Nancy. 
 
 "If you expect to make Tom pretty in any 
 two hours, sissy, get to doin it," laughed 
 Jo, as he went on his way and Nancy flew 
 on hers. 
 
 The last rays of the departing sun were 
 falling across Tom Lincoln as Nancy en 
 tered the shop, and he lifted his head from 
 the drawing knife with which he was mak 
 ing pink cedar shavings curl off the rounded 
 sides of the piggin, to smile at her with a 
 gravity that made the smile seem a very 
 personal gift. In the years that had passed 
 since wee Nancy had been lowered into his 
 arms and life, Tom had grown from a loose- 
 jointed awkward boy into a very tall, strong 
 youth, still awkward but powerful as any 
 man. His hands and feet were enormous 
 and his chest was arched like a bellows. His 
 
 54
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 head was broad-browed and fine, and was 
 poised with an uncouth grace on a long 
 neck from which his sweaty brown hickory 
 shirt fell back half way down his hairy 
 breast. His leathern apron was girded 
 about his slender, lithe waist and his serious 
 face was smudged with dirt and sweat. 
 His thick black hair rose in a shock that de 
 fied the ministrations lavished on it by Xancy 
 since the time of the sacrifice of the brown 
 bear. His eyes lost their smile and re 
 garded Xancy seriously as he began to run 
 his huge skilled hand over the surface he 
 was polishing. 
 
 "What you want, honey bird? I m 
 busy," he said. 
 
 "Joe says you can stop work and come 
 right with me, Tom," Xancy both cajoled 
 and commanded. 
 
 "Jo Hanks ain t makin this piggin, and 
 I gave my own promise to Mrs. Hendricks. 
 A promise is a promise. What do you want 
 
 55
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 of me anyway? Can t you let me be, 
 Nancy?" Tom began with defiance and 
 ended with a faltering plea to continue his 
 business in hand. 
 
 "This is singing school night and I want 
 to that is you oughter fix up, Tom." 
 Nancy had begun her answer with direct 
 enthusiasm for her task, but had paused 
 midway to inject what she considered the 
 necessary amount of cajoling. 
 
 "Oh, shoo, I can do that in ten minutes 
 after I eat my supper," Tom answered, as 
 he began once more to make the pink curls 
 fall to the floor. 
 
 "No, you can t, Tom," Nancy declared. 
 "You are just awful and and I m going 
 to fix you up myself. I just love that Miss 
 Sallie Bush, and I want you clean and nice 
 to sing with her. Please, Tom." 
 
 Did not the love in Nancy s child heart 
 for Sallie Bush but justly bear interest in 
 the older girl s faithful cherishing of the 
 
 56
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Xational Treasure she was to leave in her 
 hands years later ? 
 
 "I m no baby. I guess I can wash and 
 comb myself," Tom growled while his big 
 ears grew firey red at the bare mention of 
 the enchanting Sallie. 
 
 Now Nancy Hanks had two tried and 
 proven ways to manage Thomas Lincoln, 
 and in her heart of hearts she preferred the 
 exciting, commanding one by which she 
 fairly stormed him into doing her will: but 
 time and daylight were scarce on this oc 
 casion, and she used the other method, which 
 she knew to be more swift and sure. 
 
 "I just ask you please, please, Tom, and 
 you don t want me to cry, do you?" The 
 little tremor that Nancy, aged nine and six 
 months, threw into her voice, was worthy 
 of twenty years practice. "Gus Hardin 
 greases his boots until they shine for sing 
 ing school and Jo puts on a white shirt, and 
 Dave Hall s mother has made him a red silk 
 
 57
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 sash to put around his neck, that he calls a 
 tie. I don t want to be ashamed of you, 
 Tom." 
 
 "Oh, blame it, Nancy, what do you want 
 me to do?" Tom growled as he threw down 
 his knife and surrendered. 
 
 "Go straight home, Tom, and I 11 come 
 down to your pump with the things to fix 
 you," Nancy commanded, with joy at her 
 quick triumph dancing up into her eyes. 
 "Oh, you 11 be sure enough beautiful," and 
 with which promise, indicating the strength 
 of her imagination, Nancy departed as Tom 
 began to take off his apron, preparatory to 
 closing up shop. 
 
 The scene that followed at the pump in the 
 backyard of the Lincoln home is indicative 
 of how life was to use Thomas Lincoln, pre 
 paring a ceremony of honors for him which 
 he was not to reap. 
 
 Who shall say what burned high in his 
 strong young heart as he walked down the 
 
 58
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 dusty road, to be adorned for the meeting 
 with the beautiful one in the mule-trans 
 ported dimity, who had made his voice fal 
 ter in its devotions. Nancy s will and 
 Nancy s imagination had always impressed 
 themselves upon his own will and his own 
 imagination, and if Nancy had decided that 
 he was to be beautiful for the pleasing of the 
 beautiful Sallie, he never doubted that he 
 would meet the emergency. His heart sang 
 high. 
 
 He found Nancy waiting for him at the 
 tryst with her instruments of magic all at 
 hand, spread out on a bench beside her. 
 They were: a pair of huge scissors, a large 
 gourd of soft lye soap, a rough towel, Jo 
 Hanks slender bladed pocket knife and a 
 small deer horn full of the precious bear 
 grease, beside which lay a comb and a 
 roll of flannel for straightening and polish 
 ing the black hair. Also her father s 
 razor was near at hand, with a nice 
 
 59
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 foam of lather rubbed into a wooden sau 
 cer. 
 
 "Shave first," commanded Nancy, as he 
 came to a halt beside her. 
 
 "Do I have to?" 
 
 "Yes, you do. The other boys don t, but 
 your face scratches awful and ain t pretty," 
 was the decided answer. 
 
 The process was laborious and Nancy be 
 gan to watch the lengthening shadows in 
 fear of not enough daylight for her under 
 takings. They did extend themselves nearly 
 into the candle light ; for they were many. 
 
 The shaving accomplished, Nancy at 
 tacked the sunbrowned face and excavated 
 deep into the flaming ears with the rough 
 towel. She clipped the black shock of hair, 
 greased it lavishly and finally polished it 
 with the flannel until it shone like old ma 
 hogany. She scoured the large hands and 
 arms, and even pared and dug around the 
 rough nails, while Tom sat fairly patient 
 
 60
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 and with only slight remonstrances in the 
 shapes of groans and petitions. 
 
 "Just being clean ain t a pain, Tom," 
 Xancy soothed as she dug with the sharp 
 blade under a thumb nail that was dark with 
 native soil. 
 
 "It s all foolishness," Tom answered as 
 the deft little fingers began an assault on his 
 other huge paw. 
 
 "When you put on what I ve got in the 
 wood shed, while I grease up your boots 
 like Gus , you 11 be just wonderful, Tom," 
 Xancy persuaded as she finished wielding 
 her knife and gave a last polish to the ma 
 hogany head. 
 
 "Oh, Lordy, what you going to make me 
 do now?" groaned the martyr to the ro 
 mance in young Xancy s breast. 
 
 "It s a white shirt mother let me spin 
 and weave for you, Tom, all last winter. I 
 made it by Jo and it is a present for you. I 
 was going to bleach it two more times be- 
 
 61
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 fore you saw it, but you can wear it tonight, 
 and I 11 put it out in the dew and sun again 
 after I wash it," answered Nancy as her eyes 
 danced with the joy of bestowing the gift, 
 which was the work of art that had occupied 
 her entire winter s spare moments, and upon 
 which she had obtained her education at the 
 wheel of pioneer feminine power. 
 
 "Shoo, Nancy, I ain t fitten to wear your 
 white shirt. Better give it to Uncle Jo." 
 Tom s face was illumined with both em 
 barrassment and great gratitude. 
 
 "I made it for you, Tom, cause I m all 
 the mother you Ve got to weave you white 
 shirts, and I want you to wear it to please 
 Miss Sallie at singing. You must, Tom." 
 Small Nancy pleaded for the white shirt, 
 pleasure for herself, and the radiant Sallie 
 in all sincerity. 
 
 "All right, Nancy, I 11 do it and thank 
 you too," Thomas graciously consented. 
 "Is it in the wood house, you say?" 
 
 62
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Yes, wrapped in a clean towel, and put 
 it right on while I get the boots greased as 
 good as GUS ," Nancy commanded, as she 
 took up one of the huge rawhide boxes that 
 Thomas wore upon his wide feet on strictly 
 gala occasions, and began the humble office 
 of greasing them with the fat of the mur 
 dered bear. 
 
 "My feet don t show when I sing. Shoes 
 kinder crowd me," Tom pleaded. 
 
 "It don t look right to be dressed up at 
 one end and not the other," Nancy decided 
 sternly, as she went on with her polishing. 
 "Go on, Tom." 
 
 And Tom went.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN her management of Tom, Nancy 
 Hanks evinced the force of a strong per 
 sonality. Thomas Lincoln yielded to few 
 people, for he had a force of his own, and 
 showed it when occasion demanded. He 
 cared little and consorted less with the boys 
 of his own age; he liked best to sit and lis 
 ten, silently, and intently, to the talk of the 
 older men, though his expert knowledge on 
 the food and fur questions often made him 
 one of the council, and forced upon him a 
 voice therein. He was accustomed to speak 
 out whatever he thought, when forced to 
 speak, and his opinion and decisions were 
 often so shrewd and well balanced that the 
 men listened to him and did him the honor 
 
 64
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 to argue with him heatedly, when he op 
 posed their decisions. Under his slow- 
 speaking, awkward exterior there were 
 banked fires that when stirred emitted 
 tongues of scathing flame. He was re 
 spected far beyond his years and disliked far 
 beyond his deserts, which made him a con 
 spicuous personality. What Tom Lincoln 
 did and said was always the news of the day. 
 And at all times his huge, ungainly appear 
 ance was the target of good-natured fun. 
 
 "Tom is so ugly that you shet your eyes 
 before your nose or ears get wind of him," 
 his brother Mordecai was in the habit of 
 remarking with no particular care that Tom 
 should not hear him. 
 
 And it so happened that the critical Mor 
 decai was on hand to watch Tom s appear 
 ance from the wood house in the full glory 
 of the results of all young Xancy s efforts on 
 him, in the interest of the adored Miss Sallie 
 Bush, which was unfortunate because Nancy 
 
 65
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 really deserved at least a few moments of 
 unalloyed delight over her handiwork. 
 
 There he stood before her with his sleek 
 hair and red and polished face of sheepish 
 expression undergirded by the collar of the 
 first white shirt he had ever had upon his 
 broad back. It was tucked trimly into the 
 butternut homespun breeches which were in 
 turn tucked into the resplendent greased 
 boots, and the total was such that Xancy 
 clasped her small hands, begrimed with 
 their ministrations, to her young bosom 
 swelling with pride, and was about to give 
 vent to a feminine cry of rapture over her 
 ugly duckling, when a huge roar went up 
 from the throat of Mordecai as he lounged 
 to the back door of the house. 
 
 "Well, will you look at Solomon in all 
 his glory not arrayed like one of Tom," he 
 laughed, with ridicule in every tone of his 
 voice. "Is it the King of England or jest 
 the President of the States?" 
 
 66
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 At the guffaw Susan appeared at the door 
 and added a treble to Mordecai s bass de 
 rision. 
 
 In the twinkling of his elder brother s 
 keen eye, Thomas glory fell from him and 
 he was covered with a furious awkwardness 
 which was about to express itself in no un 
 certain terms of rage, when Nancy s anger 
 beat him to the goal. 
 
 "If Tom or anybody was as ugly as your 
 insides, Mordecai Lincoln, it would kill em 
 dead." The young idealist, capable of la 
 boring to materialize a dream of splendor, 
 and putting herself under its glamour when 
 obtained, fairly hurled at the big, slouch 
 ing, figure in the doorway. "You re an 
 old dirty dog and don t ever speak to me 
 again!" 
 
 "No, nobody must laugh at Nancy s 
 pretty boy," Susan rubbed in on the raw. 
 
 "Oh oho " wailed the young artist, put 
 ting her head down onto the little arm, all 
 
 67
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 tired out, and smudged with her labor of 
 love and fairly trembling with rage. 
 
 Nancy Hanks being abused was a clarion 
 call to Thomas Lincoln. 
 
 With a deep rage on his serious face and 
 his large black eyes in a flame, he picked up 
 a piece of stove wood that lay at his feet 
 and hurled it straight and murderously at 
 his brother s head. And if there had not 
 been the interposition of a faithful little 
 black shoulder and arm, Thomas Lincoln 
 would have been a fratricide and probably 
 hanged high on a tree, so altering the course 
 of American History. 
 
 But little Runt, the woodsman, was quick 
 on the trigger as he sprang between the em 
 battled brothers. 
 
 "Are you dead, Runt?" wailed Nancy as 
 she flew to the huddled black body, which 
 fell at the feet of Mordecai and Susan, who 
 both stood aghast at what might have hap 
 pened, rather than what had happened. 
 
 68
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Yassum, but Mars Tom did n t kill Mars 
 Mort," wailed the tortured little captive 
 crow with his arm hanging limp and his 
 shoulder dragging. Then he fainted away 
 and failed to hear the emancipation procla 
 mation issued over his unconscious body. 
 
 Slowly, like one in a dream, Thomas Lin 
 coln walked across and stood over Xancy 
 Hanks as she crouched beside the stricken 
 negro, and looking his brother full in the 
 face, said : 
 
 "Runt saved your life and me from mur 
 der, and I name him a free boy this day." 
 
 The declaration hit Mordecai Lincoln full 
 in his brain like a physical thud and he stag 
 gered. 
 
 "Don t say that, Tom," he almost en 
 treated, as his hand went up as if to pro 
 tect himself from a further blow. "Don t 
 let anybody hear you say that, Tom. You 
 can t free niggers in Kentucky." 
 
 "Live or die Runt is free," Tom answered 
 
 69
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 calmly and his eyes were so full of a strange 
 fire that Nancy looked up at him in awe 
 with her small hand pressed over her hot 
 little heart under her home-spun apron. 
 Mardecai stood silent in a like awe while 
 Susan slunk away out the front door and 
 down the road, bent on getting out of the 
 situation and relating it as quickly as pos 
 sible to Tom s discredit. 
 
 Thus Thomas Lincoln became, probably, 
 the first active Kentucky abolitionist, an 
 honor for which he was to pay a bitter price ; 
 and Nancy Hanks looked up at his assump 
 tion of that fate, for which she too was to 
 pay a price, with glowing eyes. 
 
 "Shoo, Tom, pick him up and carry him 
 to his mammy s cabin and I 11 have the half- 
 breed Injun doctor fix him when he comes 
 to look over the sick heifer tonight," Mor- 
 decai commanded as he came to himself. 
 
 "I wisht that chunk of wood had knocked 
 your head clean off instead of Runt, and I 
 70
 
 hope you die anyway," Nancy raged at Mor- 
 decai as she departed with Tom, who car 
 ried the moaning little negro tenderly, while 
 Nancy supported his bare black feet against 
 her sorrowing little white bosom. 
 
 "Don t you grieve, Mars Tom, Runt will 
 be a-stealin jam by sun up tomorrow," old 
 Jude, the mother comforted, as Tom laid 
 the Runt on her feather bed under its gay 
 patched quilt. 
 
 "Come home with me, Tom," Nancy com 
 manded as they turned away from the negro 
 cabin door. "I can t stand for Mordecai to 
 mad you any more." 
 
 "Lem me go to the woods, Nancy," an 
 swered Thomas with a dull ache in his voice 
 and eyes. 
 
 "But I w r ant you to come with me to keep 
 me from crying," Nancy wooed with the 
 threatened tears in her big purple eyes, 
 which glinted in the dusk that had come 
 down on the hot earth while it had been the 
 71
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 scene of the equally hot anger. "And I 
 want my mother to see how good you look." 
 A sob almost choked the last demand. 
 
 "All right, honey bird," Tom answered 
 promptly, covering his wound, which he 
 longed to go away and lick, to soothe his 
 champion. 
 
 The mother of Nancy Hanks was a very 
 wise and winsome woman, who had been 
 reared on broad Virginia acres and fostered 
 in all gentleness, and she knew how to use 
 her charm to straighten out the many tan 
 gles of pioneer existence to which she was 
 unaccustomed, but which she bore with cour 
 age for love of big Joseph Hanks. 
 
 Her enthusiastic admiration of Thomas in 
 party array went far towards toning down 
 the red of his big clean ears, bring up his 
 hanging head and restoring the curl and dim 
 ples to Nancy s red mouth. 
 
 "You 11 have to do a power of titivating 
 yourself, Nancy, if you are expecting to go 
 72
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 to the singing with Thomas and me," she 
 said after she had listened to the whole story 
 and smoothed the ragged surfaces of 
 Nancy s and Thomas nervous system. 
 "I ve got on my lace collar and I ve made 
 me fresh water waves." 
 
 The sweet face under the little fluffy white 
 wave-curls smiled tenderly as she called the 
 attention of the two hurt children to her own 
 adornment for their distraction. Her 
 dainty, high-bred beauty must have struck 
 a very deep note in the shy awkward boy, for 
 he laid a long arm around her slender shoul 
 ders and hugged her close against the new 
 white shirt. Then he looked at her as if in 
 surprise, and there was a note of concern in 
 his big rich voice as he spoke. 
 
 "Aunt Nancy, you ain t got any more heft 
 on you than a willow switch," he said as he 
 held her from him and looked at her. 
 "Don t your victuals meat you up none?" 
 
 "Hush, Tom," answered Mother Hanks 
 73
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 as she gave a quick love glance at big Joseph 
 coming across the front yard to the porch. 
 "I m all right and I don t want Joseph 
 worried." 
 
 Delicately nurtured Nancy Shipley, who 
 had followed her husband into the Wilder 
 ness, was about to pay the price of her life 
 for her adventure, which price many other 
 splendid Virginia women paid, for the build 
 ing of Kentucky. She knew it but hid the 
 fact in all tenderness. As her husband 
 came into the room she went into his arms 
 and clung to him in such a way as to get her 
 lips near his ear. 
 
 "Make a compliment to Tom about his 
 looks," she whispered. 
 
 "Why, Tom Lincoln, you look as big and 
 upstanding as your grandfather, old Mister 
 Abraham Lincoln," Uncle Jo declared with 
 a genuine heartiness in his face and voice, 
 which made his wife give him an extra pres 
 sure of her tender arms as she drew away 
 
 74
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 from him. The praise from his beloved 
 Uncle Jo immediately put poor Tom s pride 
 back upon its pedestal, though he smiled in 
 embarrassment and turned to Nancy, whose 
 eyes were dancing with delight at her 
 father s pronouncement. 
 
 "Want me to comb out your pig tails and 
 plate em, Nancy?" he offered heroically, for 
 the combing and plating of Nancy s long 
 braids was a task dreaded by the whole fam 
 ily connection because of the soft fluff of the 
 red-brown locks which made for agonizing 
 tangles. 
 
 "Yes, comb her, Tom, while I fix up 
 Joseph," answered Mother Hanks busily. 
 "Elder Head is here, Joseph, and we are 
 going to have prayer meeting and a love 
 feast after the singing." 
 
 "Say, Tom, men are just doll babies for 
 women folks to dress up," was all the pro 
 test big Joseph made, as he followed Mother 
 Hanks into his bedroom. 
 
 75
 
 The reciprocal grooming which Thomas 
 bestowed on Nancy was an easier task than 
 usual, for Nancy realized that time was fly 
 ing, and that she must stand with a certain 
 amount of tranquillity, while the big hands 
 performed the painful ceremony of unplat- 
 ing, untangling and replating. She real 
 ized that haste must be made if she was to 
 be fittingly adorned in the little homespun 
 frock, which had been dyed with polk juice, 
 the pink of an autumn sunset and which 
 had in its neck and sleeves a ruffle of fine 
 white Virginia linen, in time to be of the 
 party at the singing. 
 
 As it was, she and Tom were delayed by 
 a search for one of the small rawhide shoes, 
 that she was forced to ease over the pink 
 bandaged toe, and which was at last found 
 in the shop where Tom had been pegging a 
 gap in its flat sole the day before. 
 
 "Everybody s gone in the church, Tom, 
 but I know none of the other boys have got 
 
 76
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 the place by Miss Sallie away from you," 
 Nancy gasped as she trotted three steps to 
 Tom s long one down the road beside him, 
 her hand in his. 
 
 "Shoo," answered Thomas with an indif 
 ference he was far from feeling, for the hot 
 blood of stirring adolescent love was burning 
 in his cheeks and also in his sensitive ears. 
 
 Of all the desires that had moved the heart 
 of Thomas Lincoln up to that moment the 
 strongest was for the seat beside the mule- 
 imported sprigged muslin and the right to 
 hold the corner of the wearer s square old 
 singing book. And this was to be the night 
 on which he was to put his fate to the touch. 
 He knew that the whole settlement had been 
 nudging its elbows and smiling at the fact 
 that Tom Lincoln was "noticing" Sallie 
 Bush, and Nancy had succeeded in convinc 
 ing him that his adornment had made sure 
 of the conquest. 
 
 Thus it was with the confidence of a con- 
 77
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 queror, Thomas Lincoln entered the church 
 with Nancy beside him, though she almost 
 immediately turned away from him and 
 made her way to a bench beside her mother, 
 directly opposite the left corner of the log 
 room in which the singers usually occupied 
 all the seats. 
 
 And then it happened. 
 
 Nancy was just preparing to seat herself 
 beside her mother, turning first to observe 
 the tall figure of the swan, who had been her 
 ugly duckling, stride up the aisle and take 
 the place coveted by every boy in the settle 
 ment, which she was sure would be reserved 
 for him, when she stood stock still with dis 
 may. 
 
 Things had gone wrong. 
 
 The entire population of the settlement 
 was seated, ready for the elder to rise and 
 line out the first hymn, in which they were 
 to be led by the choir, a dozen young people 
 seated in the left "Amen corner," and their 
 78
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 eyes were fixed upon that spot to witness 
 the fact that when Thomas Lincoln, in all 
 his glory, arrived to culminate his "notic 
 ing" of Sallie Bush, his divinity failed to 
 sweep aside her skirts of mule-imported mus 
 lin and offer him the desired corner of her 
 book, but gave a little hitch of one shoulder 
 and a fluff of the skirts, which clearly indi 
 cated that if Thomas was to sit in the singers 
 corner it would have to be alone on a long 
 front bench. And in the midst of a titter 
 ing silence, Thomas subsided upon the cor 
 ner of the empty seat, alone, facing an au 
 dience before which in a second he would 
 have to rise and sing. 
 
 But the world was never to reckon 
 Thomas Lincoln without adding Nancy 
 Hanks to his sum total. When Thomas 
 faced his world in abashment, Lincoln Set 
 tlement s most prominent citizen, young 
 Nancy Hanks, stood beside him, singing 
 away for dear life in a full bird voice from 
 
 79
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 her mother s huge hymn book, the corner 
 of which Thomas held. And the withering 
 glance bestowed upon the faithless friend 
 from the big violet eyes held all the tragedy 
 of a betrayed hero-worshipper. 
 
 Great as was the humiliation of this public 
 flaunting to Thomas Lincoln, it was when 
 he heard the cause that the iron entered his 
 soul, which hardened him to an opinion and 
 a purpose with which he lived and died. It 
 was not until the singing, in which his rich 
 deep voice blended with Nancy s bird-like 
 flute to the shaming of the rest of the sing 
 ers, including the small but tuneful twitter 
 that rose from beneath the tucker of Miss 
 Sallie s sprigged dimity, was over, the scrip 
 tures read, and the prayers offered that 
 Thomas learned the cause of his humiliation. 
 
 According to his custom of monthly meet 
 ings in the Settlement, Elder Head con 
 cluded his services with what Methodism 
 called at that date and down the future, a 
 
 80
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Love Feast. A ceremony at which brother 
 and sister were expected to speak up and 
 accuse and forgive brother and sister. Nat 
 urally the service was at all times attended 
 with no small excitement, but upon this oc 
 casion there was plainly a weighty matter to 
 be threshed out. And though he was ig 
 norant of it, upon the shoulders of Thomas 
 Lincoln the flail of public opinion was to 
 fall. 
 
 "And now, brothers and sisters, I invite 
 you to speak what is in your heart one for 
 another, in all neighborly feeling among fol 
 lowers of our Lord." Brother Head gave 
 the invitation with anxiety in his gentle 
 face. 
 
 Immediately Susan Lincoln rose from be 
 side her husband, though his hand had been 
 laid out to restrain her. 
 
 "I wish the reproof of this congregation 
 upon Thomas Lincoln fer the rage what led 
 him to free a nigger," the rough and vindic- 
 
 81
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 tive woman drawled out with more than 
 rage, positive fury, flaming in her own red 
 face. A murmur of consternation came 
 from the majority of the settlers, who thus 
 for the first time were hearing that the dread 
 and awful act, abolition, had been committed 
 in their community. However, the know 
 ing and contemptuous smile on the face of 
 Sallie Bush, the rest of the singers and a 
 few others of the congregation showed that 
 Susan had been about her malicious busi 
 ness in the several hours that had elapsed 
 between the emancipation of the Runt and 
 the gathering of the congregation. 
 
 "Free a nigger! Poor Tom!" Sallie 
 whispered with a contemptuous giggle to 
 Gus Harding, who had slipped into the cov 
 eted place beside her, when he had beheld 
 her flouting of Tom. Mr. Bush was the 
 largest slave holder in the settlement and 
 he sat glaring at Tom from half way back 
 in the church. 
 
 82
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "That white shirt hit him loony," an 
 swered Gus with a suppressed guffaw that 
 died away as the elder turned and looked 
 past Thomas, the abolitionist, to Mordecai, 
 the head of the family, for an answer to the 
 charge against this minor member. 
 
 "Jest git after Tom for his temper, Elder! 
 That ain t nothing to the nigger freeing 
 business," Mordecai answered with easy un 
 concern. 
 
 He should have known Thomas Lincoln 
 better. 
 
 Tom rose to his feet in all his unaccus 
 tomed finery and faced the keen eyes fixed 
 on him, which were unfriendly and fierce be 
 cause of his materialization of a dread, 
 which was to mature in the future to take 
 from them property honestly acquired, but 
 which they all held with uneasy consciences. 
 
 Then Thomas Lincoln made his crude 
 speech, which was to become coherent years 
 later at Gettysburg. 
 
 83
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "I beg Mort s pardon for the temper, 
 Elder, but Runt is free and is going ter stay 
 that way. I hold it is a sin to slave any 
 human critter." With which proclamation 
 Tom brought down upon himself a storm of 
 protest. And as he stood before them all, 
 in his hand had rested the hand of small 
 Nancy Hanks, while around the two raged 
 a roaring sea of argument, accusation, refu 
 tation, protest and vilification. 
 
 But Elder Jesse Head had survived many 
 serious "love feasts," in which property 
 rights, connubial rights and the subject of 
 infant damnation had been threshed out, and 
 he knew when to pour oil on the troubled 
 waters. 
 
 "Well, brethren and sisters, we 11 leave 
 this whole matter to the Lord and commend 
 prayerful consideration of it to those mostly 
 concerned," he declaimed, a formula tried 
 many times successfully. "Let us receive 
 the benediction." 
 
 84
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "AND NOW MAY THE GRACE OF GOD BE 
 WITH US AND GUIDE US THIS DAY FOR 
 THE SAKE OF JESUS CHRIST. AMEN !" 
 
 And the men and women who stood with 
 bent heads to receive that benediction, filed 
 out with dark glances of condemnation at 
 Thomas Lincoln, as he walked among them, 
 hand in hand with Nancy Hanks. 
 
 Down the road the boy, who had made 
 himself a pariah and the child who loved him, 
 walked silently in the starlight. "Git to 
 bed, Nancy," Tom commanded at the Hanks 
 gate, as he put her from him when she would 
 have clung; and he walked away from her 
 across the road and into the sanctuary of the 
 great forest. 
 
 An hour later when big Joseph Hanks 
 was about to extinguish the last candle in 
 the log house, he heard a sound of weeping 
 from the corner where Nancy slept. Since 
 the savages had almost stolen her from him, 
 
 85
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 he always took a last look at the dark head 
 on the pillow before going to his rest, and 
 he set down the candle and bent over her as 
 he heard the smothered sobs. 
 
 "What is it, sweetling?" he asked tenderly. 
 
 "Tom! Oh, go git Tom! He s gone 
 into the woods," was the wailing answer. 
 
 "Tom kin take keer of himself in any 
 woods," big Joseph answered with comfort 
 ing assurance. 
 
 "I want him to stay in this house always, 
 so nobody will dare to talk ugly to him. Go 
 git him, Daddy." 
 
 "Yes, we 11 have to take Tom now, Joe," 
 Mother Hanks said as she came to the bed 
 side and put her thin cheek down against 
 Nancy s hot little face. "He can t live with 
 Susan and Mort after this." 
 
 "Well, can t I adopt Tom Lincoln before 
 breakfast tomorrow morning and go to sleep 
 now, Nancy?" asked Joseph with a smile of 
 ready consent at the petition of his two be- 
 
 86
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 loved women for protection for the young 
 abolitionist. 
 
 "Yes," faltered Nancy, content for the 
 moment with the promise of her father s 
 guardianship for her unfortunate. 
 
 Then while darkness and sleep settled 
 down upon the Lincoln Settlement, out in 
 the dark forest Thomas Lincoln lay with his 
 face pressed to the bosom of the land he was 
 helping to conquer, and he was drenching the 
 soil with as bitter tears as had been or ever 
 would be shed upon its richness. Part of 
 the hurt was the loss of the promise of bud 
 ding love, a glimpse of which he had caught 
 in the eyes of the young pioneer girl, and the 
 agony of it ached with the pulse of the blood 
 in the veins of his huge, strong, man-boy 
 body, but in his soul there burned a fiercer 
 fire, the conflagration that is always raised 
 by injustice. The conviction of the inherent 
 right to human freedom, which had caught 
 fire at a spark struck out by small Nancy 
 
 87
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 beside the captive poults, in whose condition 
 she had seen a likeness to her own savage 
 trapping and tying, had grown with his 
 growth until it had become to him an obli 
 gation for which he must be willing to suffer. 
 The dramatic freeing of the Runt had been 
 but the hasty culmination of an intention 
 which he had been cherishing and for which 
 he had been biding the time of his own more 
 powerful and commanding manhood. And 
 yet what was to bring order in the chaos of 
 his immature boy s heart and mind? All the 
 men of power in his small world owned slaves 
 and were eagerly buying more, for upon 
 their labor was being rapidly built a great 
 Commonwealth. Who was he to stand up 
 alone and call them to account? Where 
 could he get the strength to withstand their 
 anger, scorn and derision? Would he have 
 always to face the black looks that had been 
 cast at him that night, which was to have 
 been the occasion of his love triumph? 
 
 88
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Sallie and everybody 11 hate me now," 
 he sobbed under his breath as he pressed his 
 ugly face into the dust. 
 
 "Not me, Tom," came a soft answer to his 
 wail out of the leaf-shadowed darkness, and 
 Xancy huddled down beside him with her 
 cheek pressed upon the bear-greased hair on 
 the back of his head. "I love you, an all the 
 rest of the mean folks don t make any differ 
 ence at all. If we want to turn things aloose 
 we 11 do it." 
 
 The results of that pact were far reach 
 ing. 
 
 89
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE small epidemic of abolition fever 
 ran its course in Lincoln Settlement 
 very true to its national type. After the 
 high temperature of public opinion over 
 Thomas Lincoln s freeing of the Runt had 
 reached its culminating scene in the love 
 feast, the very next day things became more 
 normal, though there was still bad blood evi 
 denced for the champion of freedom. The 
 men of the Settlement met the sullen boy 
 with averted eye or sneering glances, and 
 the women of their households followed their 
 example, with only added hurts. For a 
 number of days Sallie Bush passed the 
 young carpenter by with only a swish of 
 her skirts, but eventually she came home to 
 supper with Betsy Hanks, about ten days 
 after the tragedy, and was ingenuous enough 
 
 90
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 to inquire for Tom, when he failed to put in 
 his appearance at the evening repast of his 
 new home. He was represented, however, 
 by wild turkey, grape jelly, walnut pickle 
 and Nancy. 
 
 "Is n t Tom Lincoln living with you now, 
 Mrs. Hanks?" Sallie had asked as she seated 
 herself by tall William Hanks, while Eliza 
 beth Hull, whom William was industriously 
 "noticing," eyed her askance from a seat be 
 side big Joseph. Tom on his adoption into 
 the Hanks family had been given the chair 
 beside sweet Mother Hanks, and upon that 
 particularly festive occasion it was notice 
 ably empty. Next to the vacant seat stood 
 young Nancy, and as the fallen idol made 
 her inquiry, the youngest member of the 
 Hanks family finished piling two plates high 
 with all the most choice food on the table, 
 added a huge dab of well nigh all the jelly 
 and stood poised for departure. But before 
 she went she thus delivered herself: 
 
 91
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Me and Tom likes to eat together out in 
 the woods when folks we don t like is visit 
 ing us," with which she swept from the log 
 room with her stately little head poised so 
 high that she was in danger of falling over 
 backwards. 
 
 "Switch tea is the only medicine that 
 would do her any good," remarked William 
 Hanks, in a temper over this insult to the 
 young lady visiting at the hospitable par 
 ental board. 
 
 "The tree ain t planted yet that 11 grow a 
 switch for my Nancy," laughed Nancy s 
 father. 
 
 "She 11 come back presently and make 
 her manners," Mother Hanks promised with 
 an apologetic tone of voice, but a twinkle 
 in her eyes that matched her husband s 
 laugh. 
 
 However, Nancy did not return and 
 make her apologies. She was engaged in 
 witnessing a scene of a great sentiment, 
 92
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 which has made its impression on the Amer 
 ican national character and institutions. 
 
 The Runt had got away from maternal 
 authority and had come hunting for Tom 
 like a dog for its master. His shoulder was 
 in a rude splint and a white rag encircled 
 his bullet head. He flung himself out of 
 the woods, and at Tom and Nancy s feet, as 
 they sat astride a log with the two high- 
 piled plates between them. 
 
 "Miss Susie said I must n t come ter you, 
 Marse Tom, cause you had done give me 
 away," he panted. "But I broke aloose and 
 come a-running. Oh, Marse Tom, say I m 
 your nigger and you ain t flung me away." 
 The pleading on the poor little crow s face 
 was an agony. 
 
 "I did n t give you away, Runt, I freed 
 you," Tom answered with affection fairly 
 shining in his solemn eyes. 
 
 "Don t say that, Marse Tom, don t say 
 that!" pleaded the Runt, dropping on his 
 
 93
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 knees before the abolitionist, who had given 
 him a man s most precious possession. 
 "What s a nigger going to do that don t 
 belong to nobody?" 
 
 The question asked by the Runt in agony, 
 rose from hundreds of thousands of black 
 throats after July fourth, eighteen sixty -two, 
 and its echo has not entirely died away even 
 unto this day. 
 
 The question was up to Thomas Lincoln 
 and it staggered him. However, Nancy 
 Hanks had the same solution ready to offer 
 that was used by the women of the Confed 
 eracy when they were left with helpless freed- 
 men to feed and control while the men of 
 their family fought over their destinies. 
 
 "You go right on working, and, trade 
 work for what you need," Nancy said, as she 
 picked up a broad plantin leaf and put a 
 generous dinner from her own plate and 
 Tom s upon it, for the sustaining of the new- 
 fledged freedman. Her Southern feminine 
 
 94
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 posterity promptly gave the liberated slaves 
 an acre and a mule with which to work, and 
 shared the crops thus produced, so institut 
 ing an economic system which holds in the 
 South even unto this day. The men who 
 had fought with conviction of right to hold 
 their slaves, returned to find that their 
 women had harnessed the freedmen to plows 
 to the interest of everybody concerned. 
 
 "Go working in the woods jest the same?" 
 questioned the Runt with relief in his big 
 black eyes. 
 
 "Jest the same," ratified Tom, as he rose 
 and stretched his long arms as Xancy handed 
 the dinner to the Runt, who squatted down 
 on his big heels to consume it. 
 
 But the fate of the Runt was not that 
 easily settled, and it hung a dark cloud on 
 the horizon of the fate of Thomas Lincoln. 
 On the surface things went on as before, 
 Runt living in his mother s cabin and work 
 ing as before, but the matter was not ended 
 
 95
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 knees before the abolitionist, who had given 
 him a man s most precious possession. 
 "What s a nigger going to do that don t 
 belong to nobody?" 
 
 The question asked by the Runt in agony, 
 rose from hundreds of thousands of black 
 throats after July fourth, eighteen sixty-two, 
 and its echo has not entirely died away even 
 unto this day. 
 
 The question was up to Thomas Lincoln 
 and it staggered him. However, Nancy 
 Hanks had the same solution ready to offer 
 that was used by the women of the Confed 
 eracy when they were left with helpless freed- 
 men to feed and control while the men of 
 their family fought over their destinies. 
 
 "You go right on working, and, trade 
 work for what you need," Nancy said, as she 
 picked up a broad plantin leaf and put a 
 generous dinner from her own plate and 
 Tom s upon it, for the sustaining of the new- 
 fledged freedman. Her Southern feminine 
 
 94
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 posterity promptly gave the liberated slaves 
 an acre and a mule with which to work, and 
 shared the crops thus produced, so institut 
 ing an economic system which holds in the 
 South even unto this day. The men who 
 had fought with conviction of right to hold 
 their slaves, returned to find that their 
 women had harnessed the freedmen to plows 
 to the interest of everybody concerned. 
 
 "Go working in the woods jest the same?" 
 questioned the Runt with relief in his big 
 black eyes. 
 
 "Jest the same," ratified Tom, as he rose 
 and stretched his long arms as Xancy handed 
 the dinner to the Runt, who squatted down 
 on his big heels to consume it. 
 
 But the fate of the Runt was not that 
 easily settled, and it hung a dark cloud on 
 the horizon of the fate of Thomas Lincoln. 
 On the surface things went on as before, 
 Runt living in his mother s cabin and work 
 ing as before, but the matter was not ended 
 
 95
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 it was to be the crisis of Thomas Lincoln s 
 life history. 
 
 The summer that Tom lived under the 
 Hanks roof with Mother Hanks and Nancy, 
 his chief friend, though the Hanks boys 
 were friendly and big Joseph always kind, 
 was perhaps the most constructive period 
 of his life. His own crude ideals became 
 crystallized and he found new ones. 
 
 When the crisp autumn days came, he 
 worked hard at the shop until the light 
 failed, then he would tramp off into the 
 woods to bring in wild grapes for the jelly, 
 nuts for curing and herbs for drying. In 
 the long evenings he boiled down to sugar 
 the syrup he had got from tapping the 
 maple trees in the spring in the wide fire 
 place in which it was pleasant to have a brisk 
 fire. William and Jo and the girls often 
 went down to the Log Tavern for singing, 
 and the dancing of Virginia reels, while ap- 
 
 96
 
 pies were roasted and corn popped, but Tom 
 always stayed at home with Nancy and 
 Mother Hanks, and the quiet evenings were 
 very precious to him. 
 
 As the brilliant autumn days began to 
 vanish earlier and earlier over the tree tops, 
 from which winter was gradually stealing 
 the mantles of gold and crimson and brown, 
 and the frosty nights grew longer, sweet 
 Mother Hanks drew into the chimney corner 
 and kept her little homespun wool shawl 
 wrapped closer about her thin shoulders. 
 Opposite her sat big Joseph, in his heart of 
 hearts grieving over her failing strength, 
 but keeping up his courage even to himself. 
 Before the hearth Nancy and Tom carried 
 on various winter activities, from the sugar 
 boilings and the sorting and laying away of 
 garden and field seeds to Nancy s spinning, 
 for which Tom carded the wool and cotton. 
 
 Then when the work was well in hand, 
 97
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Tom would reach up for a large candle, light 
 it, set it on a table by Mother Hanks and 
 make his nightly plea: 
 
 "Read, Aunt Nancy, read!" 
 
 And to the boy and girl, who were some 
 day to form the mould from which was cast 
 the foremost American, the frail pioneer 
 woman would read from the few volumes 
 that she had brought from Virginia. "Pil 
 grim s Progress" delighted Nancy and a 
 precious "JEi sop s Fables" was a continuous 
 source of pleasure to big Joseph Hanks, but 
 Tom never tired of the "Psalms of David," 
 and he always wanted the story of the de 
 liverance of the Israelites out of Egypt. As 
 he stirred and dipped and poured the golden 
 mass of maple juice from kettle to kettle 
 and back again, his dark eyes would glow in 
 the firelight as the gentle voice read on 
 through the stirring story from the Lord s 
 proclamation to Moses: 
 
 98
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "I have also heard the groaning of the 
 children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep 
 in bondage, and I have remembered my 
 covenant and I will bring you out from 
 under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I 
 will rid you out of their bondage- 
 through the long wandering of the freedman 
 to the Divine command: 
 
 "Moses my servant is dead, now therefore 
 arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all thy 
 people, unto the land which I do give to 
 them." 
 
 "A mighty story, a mighty story," big 
 Joseph would comment between puffs from 
 his corn cob pipe. "That Moses led a whole 
 nation of people to freedom. Seems a pity 
 he could n t go into the promised land with 
 em and get some of the credit." 
 
 99
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "But he started em, he started em," 
 Thomas would mutter as he poured a spoon 
 ful of the golden and thickening syrup on 
 a cedar chip and passed it up for Nancy s 
 judgment as to its sugaring off. 
 
 The story of Moses planted in the heart 
 of Thomas Lincoln was to bear its fruit 
 down the ages. 
 
 Then during some of the long evenings 
 big Joseph would hold forth, and the thing 
 that most interested both Tom and Nancy 
 were his tales of what their families had done 
 "back in Virginia and still beyont." 
 
 The favorite story of Nancy was of the 
 participation of one of Tom s ancestors, 
 Captain Ockley Lincoln, in the Boston Tea 
 Party. 
 
 "And did they jest up and throw all that 
 tea away into the water because they wanted 
 to be free of England, Daddy?" she would 
 ask with sparkling eyes, for energetic action 
 always appealed to Nancy. "I reckon the 
 100
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 ocean tasted like tea for a week. I wisht 
 he d been my antsister, Daddy, stead of 
 Tom s!" 
 
 "Shoo, Nancy," Tom would answer as his 
 kernels of corn popped into white fluffy balls, 
 "I 11 trade him for them Hanks men what 
 poured the iron fer the big Liberty Bell 
 with it written on it Proclaim Liberty 
 throughout all the land and unto all the in 
 habitants thereof. 
 
 "Now don t go and trade her your uncle 
 Levi Lincoln, what the President appointed 
 Associate Justice of the States, Tom. Your 
 Grandpa Lincoln set great store by him and 
 used to go visit him in Philadelphia. He 
 was a Secretary of State oncet and helped 
 make out the constitution to run Massa 
 chusetts by. Don t never trade your Uncle 
 Levi away, Tom. He is a statesman and 
 you must try to be one too." As he spoke 
 Joseph Hanks smiled indulgently at the 
 awkward, ignorant boy before him, who 
 101
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 seemed but a scion of the Lincolns gone to 
 seed. 
 
 In the future his seed was to be the great 
 est of them all. 
 
 "I don t want his Uncle Levi, I want that 
 soldier, Mister Lincoln, at Yorktown bat 
 tle," Nancy answered, as she made her 
 wheel whirl and spin as dexterously as ever 
 her mother had done. "It was from him 
 that the eagle, with the snake in his claws, 
 got on Tom s father s powder horn. I like 
 fighting, I do." 
 
 "His grandfather over in England had a 
 red cross with a gold star in the middle of 
 it worked on his uniform. You might work 
 one on Tom s shirt for him, Nancy, when you 
 ain t busy," big Joseph teased. 
 
 "You can have it to put on your bonnet, 
 Nancy," Thomas said, as he stirred his pop 
 ping corn and again dipped and poured 
 the sugaring syrup from the ladle. 
 
 His hereditary red cross with a golden 
 
 102
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 star would have been a fitting emblem to 
 blazon on the arm of poor Tom Lincoln, 
 who had the right to them from his fathers 
 and whose son would prove it a fitting in 
 signia. 
 
 "Well, let s don t make fun about our 
 forefathers, but be thankful they were good 
 and gallant gentlemen," Mother Hanks soft 
 voice rather mused than reproved. "Help 
 me to bed, Joseph." 
 
 "Ain t Aunt Nancy getting weaker, 
 Nancy?" Tom questioned with uneasiness in 
 his large affectionate eyes that followed his 
 Uncle Joseph s big frame as he bore his deli 
 cate wife into her bedroom. 
 
 "I don t know, is she, Tom?" Nancy ques 
 tioned with fright in her eyes as she snapped 
 her thread and let her wheel slow down. 
 
 "Hush, don t let on before Uncle Jo. He 
 can t stand it," Tom cautioned as the burly 
 pioneer came back into the room. 
 
 "S posen you read us a Psalm, Nancy," 
 
 103
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 said big father Joseph, who was always con 
 sumed with pride when he watched the dark 
 red head bent over the big book and heard 
 the sweet voice intone the excellent words of 
 David, the singer. 
 
 Then came last nights for the little con 
 clave around the fire. Big Joseph Hanks 
 was not to be called upon to "stand" the 
 loss of the wife of his bosom. In the late 
 fall he was taken with a congestive chill 
 from being too long out in the first and un 
 expected snow fall, and died in less than a 
 week. All the while he was ill, Mother 
 Hanks sat beside him with that quiet forti 
 tude a courageous soul in a weak body often 
 shows, and her hand clasped his firmly until 
 it grew cold. She lived less than a month, 
 for there are some hearts that are so closely 
 knit that when either is amputated, the other 
 bleeds to death; and their union is apt to 
 produce such as Nancy Hanks and her 
 progeny. 
 
 104
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 The night before the mother s going, she 
 sent her two oldest girls and the boys from 
 the room and drew her youngest child, 
 Nancy, close against her pillow with her 
 feeble arms. 
 
 "I don t know why, Nancy, but it is in my 
 heart to say something to you that you won t 
 understand now. It seems like a message 
 and you must remember it. Love your man 
 when you get one, hard, Nancy, and believe 
 in him and follow him even to your death. 
 A blessing will come of it. Remember!" 
 
 And Nancy remembered. The blessing 
 which came was the heritage of a nation. 
 
 Snowflakes that were like bits of feathers 
 from the wings of the archangels floated 
 silently from the skies down through the 
 stark branches of the great forest trees un 
 der which they buried sweet, brave, gentle 
 Nancy Hanks beside the pioneer lover she 
 had followed into the fastness of the great 
 new Commonwealth on which her love was 
 
 105
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 to leave so deep a mark, and covered her 
 grave with an immaculate pall. 
 
 That night there was a solemn and heart 
 broken conclave in the parentless Hanks 
 home. Around the huge hearth was as 
 sembled the whole family and husky voices 
 discussed what was best to do for the be 
 reaved. 
 
 And as usual, good Richard Berry had the 
 deciding voice. 
 
 "As Betsy is going to be joined in wed 
 lock with Levi Hall so soon, and she wants 
 to stay by him here, it will be best for Mor- 
 decai and Susan to give her shelter until 
 that culmination," he adjudged thought 
 fully. 
 
 "Welcome she 11 be, Uncle Berry," spoke 
 up Mordecai promptly, with a sharp and 
 commanding look at rough Susan, who this 
 time rose to the occasion with less acidity 
 than usual. 
 
 106
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "She 11 be a power of help," the aunt 
 agreed. "Aunt Nancy has made good spin 
 ners and weavers of her girls." 
 
 "And me and Thomas Sparrow have got 
 a place in our home and hearts for Polly and 
 Nancy," spoke up Elizabeth Sparrow 
 quickly, as if to get in her claim before any 
 other could be voiced. 
 
 "Polly, yes, Sister Sparrow, but " at this 
 point Richard Berry s big voice faltered and 
 he held out his arms to Nancy, who sat 
 crouched on the floor across the hearth from 
 him with Tom Lincoln s arm around her and 
 with her great eyes dark, brilliant with cour 
 ageously controlled tears. Straight as an 
 arrow she flew into the arms held out to her 
 and as her beloved Uncle Berry clasped her 
 close, gentle Lucy, his wife, bent and patted 
 the gray and red heads pressed close to 
 gether. She knew how far short his two 
 rough boys had fallen in filling his paternal 
 107
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 heart, which had always yearned enviously 
 over the Hanks treasure with her purple 
 eyes and vigorous disposition. 
 
 "William and Jo and Tom can manage to 
 make out with Susan and Betsy a-looking 
 after em and they can keep on with the 
 business," said Mordecai, making a decision 
 in which the three Hanks boys acquiesced 
 with nods of their head. 
 
 "Tom s going with me," spoke up Nancy 
 quickly, when she heard this mention of Tom 
 as he sat silent in the shadow. 
 
 "Shoo, honey, we can t do without Tom, 
 fer a while yit," big Mordecai hastened to 
 say. "Tom, he s the master shingler in the 
 Settlement and they is six houses to roof in 
 with snow flying already. You don t want 
 nobody to freeze, do you?" 
 
 All of the family knew that the only ap 
 peal from her will that swayed young Nancy 
 was one made to her sympathies, and they 
 also knew that as she sat beside Uncle 
 
 108
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Berry s knee her position was invincible and 
 her dictums were not to be questioned. 
 
 "Granny Hendricks is mighty old to have 
 a leaking roof in winter," Jo Hanks cau 
 tiously ventured into the conversation. All 
 eyes were turned on Nancy as she decided 
 the question of the present residence and 
 activity of Thomas. 
 
 "I 11 let him stay this winter, but when 
 leaves bloom out again, he 11 have to come 
 where I am," Nancy decided thoughtfully. 
 "You 11 come to me, Tom, won t you?" 
 
 "Yes, I 11 come after you," Tom prom 
 ised, with relief written all over his somber 
 face, for the removal into a strange com 
 munity would have tried his bashful soul be 
 yond measure. His ponderous imagination 
 had not shown him a world devoid of Nancy. 
 It was only dimly revealed to him the next 
 day, when he put her down in the straw in 
 the wagon bed in which she was to be sledded 
 away from him through the great forest, 
 
 109
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 over whose white blanket of snow rested a 
 gray veil of mist, lined with the black of the 
 tree-trunks and boughs and twigs. 
 
 "Don t forget me, honey bird," he said, 
 and then as Richard Berry stood up and 
 cracked his whip over the backs of the two 
 horses hitched to the sled, he put his rough 
 cheek against hers and held her close. 
 
 "Never, Tom," she said quietly as she 
 clutched at him for a second before the 
 plunging horses tore her away from him. 
 
 It was well that neither Tom nor Nancy 
 knew that their separation was to last a 
 dozen years. 
 
 no
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 IT was into a very different world from 
 Lincoln Settlement that the steaming 
 horses sledded ten-year-old Nancy Hanks. 
 The decade that stretched from 1790 to 1800 
 was and remains one of the most potent in 
 the annals of American History. A steady 
 stream of settlers, with their huge wagons, 
 flocks, herds and household goods, had 
 poured across the Appalachian range into 
 the Mississippi Valley, by a road that Nature 
 had built of the bridle paths of the pioneers ; 
 and they had settled themselves around the 
 outposts and stockades set up by the hardy 
 pioneers from Boone to Robinson. In the 
 caravans came skilled workmen from across 
 the ocean, who began to build forges and 
 make machinery for the clearing and culti 
 vating of the broad acres. In 1790, less 
 111
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 than two hundred thousand pounds of cot 
 ton were exported from the States, which 
 were at that time struggling one by one to 
 ratify the Union that had been offered them, 
 but in 1793 Eli Whitney invented the cot 
 ton gin in Georgia, and in 1800 America 
 sent across the water nearly twenty million 
 pounds. The South began to grow rich, 
 even as it cleared its forests, and the whole 
 Mississippi Valley teemed with energetic 
 life. 
 
 The case of the little settlement at Pleas 
 ant Grove, which grew into Elizabethtown, 
 was typical. When Nancy Hanks had 
 come down the Wilderness Trail with her 
 parents and uncles and aunts, the Berrys 
 and Sparrows had left the Hankses and Lin- 
 coins in their cabins on Lincoln Creek, and 
 gone deeper into the Dark and Bloody 
 Ground. They had staked out their lands a 
 few miles beyond Elizabethtown, which was 
 at a crossing of the roads that were trav- 
 
 112
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 elled by the emigrants going into Tennessee 
 and Ohio, and which had grown like the 
 proverbial mushroom, far outdistancing the 
 Lincoln Settlement. 
 
 As Nancy was sledded through the village, 
 a bright wintry morning in late November, 
 her big purple eyes were wide open with 
 eager astonishment as she beheld the poplar 
 log court house built in the center of a square, 
 around whose decorous lines were planted a 
 number of other houses not built of logs, 
 but of crude brick laid with mud. 
 
 "How did they nail those houses, Uncle 
 Berry?" Nancy demanded, as she stood up 
 in the sled and craned her neck out over the 
 high front seat. 
 
 "Stuck em together with mud, sweet- 
 ling," answered Mr. Berry with a pleased 
 laugh at Nancy s powers of observation. 
 
 "I thought all houses was made outen 
 logs," she said, still looking back at the in 
 teresting houses without nails, as Mr. Berry 
 
 113
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 turned off the public square into the road 
 that led out to Beechland. 
 
 "We ve got boards nailed over the logs 
 in our house, Nancy," said Frank Berry 
 with a laugh. "Only country folks live in 
 log houses." Frank spoke with the conde 
 scension of fifteen years to ten and got the 
 retort that is usually given between those 
 ages, only Nancy s answer showed the quick 
 wit to which she had been born. 
 
 "Logs raise up better manners than 
 planks," she sniffed, with a flare of dignified 
 anger from her big eyes. 
 
 "She winged you there, son, and I 11 limb 
 you if you ever again give her cause for a 
 shot like that," said Mr. Berry as he drove 
 his steaming team along the road towards 
 the plank-covered log abode. "A boy with 
 a sister has got to make his steps slide easy 
 and cautious like." 
 
 "Yes, Pa," answered Frank meekly. 
 
 "Welcome, Nancy, and may this be a true 
 
 114
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 home to you," Uncle Berry said as he stepped 
 down over the runners and held up his arms 
 to the bereaved child. 
 
 Perhaps what comforted Nancy most in 
 her first hard orphaned days was the finding 
 of Sarah Mitchell in the Berry household. 
 Xancy had heard of Sarah s return after 
 the Wayne Indian treaty, but it seemed too 
 good to be true, to go off in a corner and sit 
 with Sarah s arm around her and hear about 
 the five years of captivity with the old squaw 
 in the tepee. Such stories were a never fail 
 ing diversion from her loss. 
 
 "Let me tell you about what the Indian 
 did when he found your chewed rope that 
 morning," Sarah w r ould offer if she waked 
 and found Nancy deep in the tears of mother 
 hunger in the dead of night on the pillow 
 next to hers. 
 
 "What did he do?" Nancy would stop 
 sobbing to ask, though she had heard it over 
 and over. 
 
 115
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "He whipped his squaw first and then 
 
 And gentle Sarah never failed to be sur 
 prised by Nancy s showing her judicial tem 
 perament by remarking: 
 
 "That squaw oughter watched when he 
 told her to." 
 
 And with Sarah in it the Berry home was 
 a real home for Nancy the next decade of 
 her life. The house was wide and comfort 
 able and very typical of the homes that the 
 pioneers achieved for themselves, after the 
 days of "settling" had passed. The orig 
 inal log cabin of some thirty square feet had 
 first been duplicated, with an open porch be 
 tween the new room and the old. Then 
 wings and lean-tos had been built and the 
 whole covered in with a wide shingled roof, 
 in which dormer windows had been cut to 
 make available the large space under the 
 arched timbers. Then an enterprising 
 Scotchman had come along to build a crude 
 saw-mill, and forthwith the log homes of the 
 
 116
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 well-to-do inhabitants of what had now been 
 named the township of Beechland, and of 
 Elizabethtown a few miles away, were cov 
 ered with wide rough planks, which soon 
 weathered to a soft gray. 
 
 Back of the Berry home rolled away more 
 than a hundred acres, which Richard Berry, 
 his boys and a few slaves obtained from trad 
 ers, had cleared and planted with cotton, 
 which soared in price by the month. Inside 
 the house were all the comforts obtainable. 
 Mule pack merchants had begun to stream 
 out from the manufacturing centers of the 
 Atlantic Coast, and they brought w r ith them 
 everything from thin china and silverware 
 to exquisite purple and fine linen for the 
 adorning of the gentry for a gala occasion. 
 However, the majority of the population of 
 Beechland and Elizabethtown was still 
 clothed in homespun woven from the prod 
 ucts of the fields near at hand. 
 
 And it was at the loom that Nancy first 
 117
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 distinguished herself and put herself in line 
 to become as prominent a citizen of Beech- 
 land and Elizabethtown as of Lincoln 
 Creek. 
 
 "Well, Nancy, how about Miss Kille- 
 brew s Dame School in Elizabethtown after 
 Christmas," Uncle Berry had said to the 
 young lady in his house one evening after 
 supper, as they all sat around the fire in the 
 big living-room which was bright with a rag- 
 woven carpet, white cotton curtains and a 
 melodeon in the corner, which had been a 
 burden borne by two weary mules all the 
 way from Philadelphia. 
 
 "I can read better n Milly Hume or Jean 
 Robinson right now, and they re sixteen," 
 answered Nancy, as she turned her wheel 
 and set the fine white cotton thread running 
 through her slim little fingers onto the huge 
 wooden bodkin. "My mother knew more 
 than Miss Killebrew and she taught " here 
 the firm young voice broke and tears glit- 
 318
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 tered on the swiftly moving fingers which 
 did not falter at their task, even under the 
 stress of an aching and lonely heart. 
 
 "Yes, and Nancy is a whole lot prettier n 
 any girl in Elizabethtown," young Ned 
 Berry hastened to exclaim with the loyalty 
 of a deep affection, which had grown in his 
 heart for his young foster sister. "I bet 
 two bits her hair is a foot longer than any 
 girl s that lives there." 
 
 "Well, as that is the case, of course Nancy 
 don t need to go to school," agreed Uncle 
 Berry with a twinkle in his eye as the dim 
 ples broke cover around Nancy s mouth, 
 even while the last tear was dripping from 
 her eyes. 
 
 "Yes, Sister Nancy always took more edu 
 cation than the rest of us sisters," said Aunt 
 Lucy from her chair over in the chimney 
 corner. "Nobody could want any more 
 education than she had, and I expect she 
 gave most of hers to Nancy." 
 
 119
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "But maybe I have n t got enough, so I 11 
 go to school some," Nancy decided for her 
 self, in a capable young voice, as she whirled 
 her wheel. "Most of the time I m going 
 to learn to make dyes out of wood things 
 like Tom was teaching me and weave cloth 
 in patterns for trade." 
 
 The mother of Abraham Lincoln was 
 probably the first woman in Kentucky to 
 enter trade and secure her own financial in 
 dependence. By the time she was sixteen, 
 Nancy Hanks was dyeing and weaving fab 
 rics that competed with those of the mule 
 pack and prairie schooner merchants. At 
 that age of feminine enchantment she was 
 very tall and broad and high headed and 
 clean limbed. She clothed her beautiful 
 budding young body in her own choicest 
 weaves, and their cut was so suited to her 
 lithe young lines that she strongly resembled 
 a lady of very high degree as she went along 
 her independent course of existence in and 
 
 120
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 out and around and about Elizabethtown, 
 into which she rode whenever she chose. 
 And nobody could deny that she was one 
 of the small metropolis most prominent citi 
 zens. Where Nancy Hanks happened to 
 be, there was the center of interest. 
 
 Xow Elizabethtown had reached that 
 stage of its development from its settlement 
 days at which the inhabitants begin to di 
 vide themselves into arbitrary groups, finan 
 cial, cultural and religious. 
 
 Sandy MacGill had added a very good 
 brick kiln to his now numerous saw mills, 
 and he and Ned Berry, with his father s fi 
 nancial aid and advice, were becoming first- 
 class builders of the sturdy, bewinged houses 
 with white columns supporting the roofs of 
 their front porches, over which roses of im 
 ported English variety wreathed themselves. 
 And in the stately parlors constructed by 
 Sandy and Ned, which were often planned 
 out on paper by Nancy Hanks, on the win- 
 121
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 ter nights with Ned before the Berry log 
 fire out at Beechland, there had come spin- 
 nets and melodeons, English chintz curtains, 
 French damask, and also imported fine man 
 ners. 
 
 "Say, Nancy, Milly Hume got home 
 from that Philadelphia school today, and 
 they have learned all remembers of me outen 
 her head," Frank Berry laughed as he filled 
 his pipe and looked at the crude architec 
 tural sketch Nancy was making for Ned to 
 use in constructing the eight-room house in 
 which the father of the highly educated 
 Milly expected to cage her. "Maybe my 
 leather apron and tool box was what you call 
 a disguise to her." 
 
 "Milly s head ain t big enough to hold you 
 and a blue silk parasol at the same time, 
 Frank," Nancy laughed with good-humored 
 toleration. She had herself received a frigid 
 salutation from Miss Hume that afternoon 
 
 122
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 in Elizabethtown, and she had been ponder 
 ing it. 
 
 Two summers later Miss Mildred Hume, 
 Miss Jean Robinson and a half dozen other 
 feminine scions of the leading families of 
 Washington County, Kentucky, were grad 
 uated back to their native heath, and about 
 that time a still larger number of masculine 
 young bloods got back from the foreign 
 cities of Boston, Xew York and Philadel 
 phia, where they had been sent for a cul 
 tural inlay upon their backwoods manhood. 
 Thereupon social distinctions were for the 
 first time laid down. On the Public Square 
 Pioneers Hume arid Robinson and Meri- 
 weather, in their purple and fine linen, still 
 eagerly met Pioneers Berry and Sparrow 
 and Hull and Clancy in their dark-eyed and 
 dignified homespun, slapped each other on 
 the back and swapped trapper tales and 
 political opinions of Thomas Jefferson and 
 
 123
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 in the coffee houses of Philadelphia, from 
 which city he had just returned after a 
 number of years educational sojourn, turned 
 and presented a face of considerable interest. 
 
 "I wonder if Nancy Hanks will be there?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "Sure to, and where Nancy is there is 
 going to be a great frolic," answered Mr. 
 Robinson with a broad and affectionate 
 smile, as he polished his huge gold-rimmed 
 glasses. "The minx sold me fifty pounds of 
 maple sugar she and Frank Berry have made 
 at a half cent over price, but I made her 
 throw in a piece of homespun of a rich but 
 ternut that I want for a vest. Nancy is a 
 born trader and the Lord help this township 
 if she takes to horses." 
 
 "Poor, rough Nancy," Miss Robinson ad 
 judged languidly, as she smiled with the in 
 tent of enchantment upon Mr. Meriweather, 
 who was, to say the least of it, a very desir 
 able and lovely personage in his tight snuff - 
 
 126
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 colored broadcloth trousers, pigeon-tailed 
 long coat and much beruffled shirt sur 
 mounted by a high black satin stock. And 
 his beauty was not his only allurement. A 
 Clinton uncle of great wealth in Philadelphia 
 had just concluded arrangements for the 
 first bank in the township and had made 
 young Clint its president, cashier and clerk. 
 However, the young combination bank offi 
 cial failed to be enchanted and pursued the 
 subject of Nancy Hanks. 
 
 "Breck Kyle says she is a humdinger," he 
 observed, as he rose from the bench of the 
 spinnet beside Miss Robinson with pursuit 
 plainly in his eye. 
 
 And at that moment was laid a founda 
 tion for trouble from which brave Nancy 
 was to suffer, even into history. 
 
 And the meeting of Nancy Hanks with 
 Clinton Meriweather was after this manner: 
 
 Nancy had dressed early for the candy 
 pull and ridden into Elizabethtown. She 
 127
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 had donned the violet dress with the fine 
 white tucker which lay close and sweet in 
 just the perfect line around the creamy col 
 umn of her round neck, which supported her 
 stately little head, bound about with fluffy 
 red-gold braids in the most beautiful pagan 
 poise, and fell open almost to the arch of 
 her round breast. The soft fine cotton fab 
 ric was cut in long lines which displayed the 
 fine symmetry of flanks and back and hips 
 which were as strong and lithe as a man s. 
 Her slender feet were clad in a pair of the 
 most shapely slippers ever carried by mules 
 from the city of Philadelphia, and her slen 
 der little ankles were covered by stockings 
 knitted of the very finest thread ever drawn 
 from a wheel, with the most intricate pattern 
 of drop-stitch clocks ever devised by the 
 mind of woman. And Nancy, though 
 armed for conquest, was out for business, and 
 the light that made her big purple eyes glow 
 back of their dark fringe and her full red 
 
 128
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 mouth break over her big white teeth with 
 a smile of delightful satisfaction, was from 
 the fact that she had just sold Mr. Giles Clai- 
 bourne another fifty pounds of sugar at a 
 still higher price than that at which Mr. 
 Hume had acquired his buckets and with no 
 homespun to boot. The trade had been 
 made in front of the Elizabethtown Tavern, 
 and Nancy was not at all aware of the part 
 her gala attire had taken in the deal, but 
 laid it all entirely to her business acumen. 
 Mr. Claibourne was the grocery king of the 
 town as well as the Circuit Judge of the Dis 
 trict Court. He was also a widower of 
 thirty with four small Claibournes on his 
 heart and mind in a disordered, negro-con 
 ducted home. Nancy could have sold him 
 the sugar at any price if she had just recog 
 nized the fact. 
 
 And while she was smiling over her trade, 
 she came face to face with Clinton Meri- 
 weather. They stood facing each other for 
 
 129
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 a moment like beautiful wood creatures, then 
 both faces broke into delighted smiles. 
 
 "Nancy Hanks!" exclaimed the young 
 banker with a sharp intake of his breath 
 from very astonishment at the beauty of the 
 girl. 
 
 "Is it Clinton Meriweather?" asked 
 Nancy with cordiality beginning to shine 
 back of the lashes that curled themselves 
 up at an angle of delighted inquiry. "Wel 
 come home!" As she spoke she held out her 
 hand and Mr. Meriweather met a grasp 
 whose strength surprised him. 
 
 "Please forgive me for the circleburs I 
 put in your hair the last time I saw you, 
 and the time I made you stump your big 
 toe by jumping at you around the corner 
 of Babbitt s store." As he pleaded, Clinton 
 held Nancy s strong brown hand in his and 
 turned and began to walk with her towards 
 her horse, hitched in front of the Court 
 House. 
 
 130
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "When I heard you were coming home I 
 put up my plats and put on my shoes," 
 Nancy laughed, and the color rose on her 
 cheeks as she found it slightly difficult to 
 withdraw her hand from that of her old tor 
 mentor. 
 
 "Yes, you d better be be on guard," 
 Clinton answered her with color in his own 
 cheeks. "I ve come home to stay now and 
 I m going to make it worth your while to 
 
 "Oh, Clint, I think it is wonderful for 
 Elizabethtown to have a real bank and I 11 
 be mighty glad to put my two gourds full 
 of money in it, but how will you know whose 
 money is whose? Tell me just how you 11 
 do it all." Nancy s quick change of mind 
 from sentiment to business was so genuine 
 that it carried Clinton Meriweather with her. 
 There is nothing so exciting to a fledgling 
 business man as to discuss high finance with 
 a woman still younger and still more igno 
 rant than himself. 
 
 131
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 When Nancy Hanks rode out to the Hull 
 candy pulling Clinton Meriweather rode on 
 her horse behind her, and they still talked 
 business as her two-year-old Baldy pranced 
 and shied along in the starlit twilight, jos 
 tling soft homespun shoulder against the 
 brawn under the broadcloth. Nancy Hanks 
 broke in most of the horses ridden by the 
 feminine population of Elizabethtown. 
 
 The welcome of the candy pullers, for the 
 banker, was hearty, for all stockade boys 
 and girls had known each other well in a 
 barefoot freedom of friendship when In 
 dians had threatened. Rosannah Ingrain 
 and Hannah Lytsey pulled his candy with 
 him with as openly eager coquetry as Miss 
 Robinson had veiled, and Nancy Sparrow 
 matched popping corn with him on the 
 hearth. Great had been the mirth when 
 the grain named for the guest of honor 
 popped defiantly away from the one named 
 for the little Sparrow. The young banker 
 
 132
 
 picked up his kernel in feigned ruefulness, 
 but later he handed it to Nancy Hanks with 
 a significant look from his big blue eyes. 
 Nancy ate it without looking at him, and 
 turned to take walnut meats from Sam 
 Hardstay s plow-calloused hand. 
 
 It was no wonder that it was after ten 
 o clock and every soft lump of molasses 
 candy pulled into a yellow plat before Mr. 
 Meriweather arrived at the Hume residence, 
 just in time to have ice cream and cake 
 served to him in paper frills, imported from 
 Baltimore and France. 
 
 "Where Ve you been, Clint?" demanded 
 young Breck Kyle, whose indorsement of 
 the charms of Nancy Hanks had been re 
 sponsible for the bank president s pursuit 
 thereof. 
 
 "Business," answered his friend. "The 
 Elizabethtown bank has secured its first de 
 positor." 
 
 "Who, Clinton?" demanded Jean with 
 
 133
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 cordiality coming back into her cool face 
 and voice at thus hearing that business was 
 the cause of her guest s late arrival. 
 
 "Nancy Hanks. She had nearly thirty 
 dollars in two gourds, and they are now 
 locked up in my safe. Yes, Kyle, she s a 
 humdinger." 
 
 Seven very highly educated young ladies 
 exchanged significant glances at this mo 
 ment and seven white shoulders above real 
 lace frills were slightly elevated. 
 
 "Poor Nancy," remarked Jean Robinson, 
 as she turned and began to make a noise of 
 "Annie Laurie," of which poor Nancy would 
 have made delicious music. 
 
 And to be just, how could a big strapping, 
 beautiful free woman, who walked among 
 the men their equal in strength and prowess 
 and acumen, fail to be a menace to a circle 
 of fine ladies, who had been taught at great 
 expense that a woman s place is to sit at 
 home and sew a seam, fine or coarse, accord- 
 
 134
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 ing to her station? Their little tea drinkings 
 would have been dull indeed had they not had 
 the doings of Nancy to thrill them with 
 horror. 
 
 "I saw Nancy Hanks coming out of the 
 woods with polk berries in a basket and, my 
 dear, her dress is at least four inches from 
 the ground. I could see all of her ankle." 
 
 "She had her sleeves rolled to her shoul 
 ders at the corn husking the other night, and 
 husked with the men and beat them. How 
 coarse!" 
 
 "I met her driving a hay wagon out on the 
 road and I saw a half yard of her leg when 
 she used the brake. Clinton Meriweather 
 w r as with me and I felt so sorry for her, 
 though she did n t seem to mind and waved 
 her hat at us." 
 
 "I saw her standing in front of the Tav 
 ern talking to five men, who were all laugh 
 ing at her, and I crossed the street." 
 
 "I met her in front of the Court House 
 
 135
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 with Clint and Breck and Lee the other day, 
 and I simply failed to see them. Now Lee 
 is n t speaking to me." 
 
 So it was that Nancy Hanks paid the pen 
 alty of being one of the buds on the human 
 race that flower once in many generations 
 in any land. The normal man resents the 
 superman and the feeling is intensified when 
 the persons in question are of the other sex. 
 And as the supermen and women are apt to 
 bud in the class of the genuine toilers, who 
 do the constructive work of their commun 
 ities, the protest of the cultured idlers is apt 
 to be bitter. The situation has been voiced 
 in song and story long before the day of 
 Nancy Hanks, and will be repeated into the 
 future indefinitely. 
 
 136
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 BY the time she had reached her majority 
 Nancy Hanks was indeed the foremost 
 citizen of Elizabethtown, and if she had 
 been a man she would have undoubtedly been 
 either Sheriff or Judge. In her own small 
 group of young folk she was an absolute dic 
 tator and she drove them fast and hard. 
 However, at times she had serious group 
 troubles, and not the least was with Nancy 
 Sparrow, her own cousin, who was the thorn 
 in the flesh of gallant Nancy, and whose es 
 capades were often credited to the account 
 that History was even then keeping on 
 Nancy Hanks. 
 
 "Nancy, honey, I jest don t know what to 
 do about my Nancy, and that wild Breck 
 Kyle," her aunt Elizabeth Sparrow said to 
 137
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Nancy Hanks, whom she had stopped as she 
 was riding by the Sparrow home on her way 
 into Elizabethtown with a bolt of butternut 
 jeans and one of bleached cotton sheeting in 
 her saddle-bags. "She went out with him 
 last night on a buggy ride and and it was 
 most midnight when she snuck in. I don t 
 want her daddy to know cause they would be 
 killing shore. And Charlie Friend waiting 
 to marry her, too." 
 
 "What did she say, Aunt Lizzie?" asked 
 Nancy with determination lighting her pur 
 ple eyes, and a firm line straightening the 
 curves of her red mouth. 
 
 "She gave me sass and went on up the lad 
 der into her room. Oh, I don t know what 
 to do, Nancy, for I have my suspicions that 
 disgrace is coming. Say something to her, 
 Nancy, she 11 listen to you." 
 
 "Suspicion is the kind of thing that breeds 
 disgrace. Don t you fret, Aunt Lizzie, I 11 
 attend to Nancy and Breck Kyle," the 
 
 138
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 young dictator answered as she induced Bald 
 to come down on all four feet and progress 
 towards the Public Square. As she rode 
 along there was the lilt of a scarlet tanager 
 issuing from her throat. 
 
 If Napoleon Bonaparte had known of 
 Nancy Hanks he would have given her a 
 staff appointment. And when Nancy went 
 into action she went into quick action. 
 
 After she had hitched Bald, the first of 
 the eternal triangle she met was big clumsy 
 Charlie Friend, who had cleared ten acres 
 of land over on the Creek since his sixteenth 
 year, planted it in cotton as he cleared, and 
 who was now finishing the building of a two- 
 room cabin on it. He had the strength of a 
 Samson but his blood ran as weak as water 
 when he was in the presence of Nancy Spar 
 row, though it also burned red in his huge 
 ears. 
 
 "Howday, Nancy Hanks," he said with a 
 broad grin as Nancy stopped, lifted the 
 
 139
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 bolts of cloth she was carrying from her 
 head to her hip, and stopped for a parley 
 with him. Man and boy looked upon Nancy 
 as a comrade if they looked not with desire. 
 
 "Say, Charlie, folks say you are backward 
 about asking Nancy Sparrow to live in that 
 fine new cabin. I don t like folks to make 
 fun of Nancy," as Nancy spoke these words 
 of untruth and guile, she looked at Charlie, 
 who had got crimson of ears at the very 
 mention of the object of his desires, with af 
 fectionate respect that put stiffening into his 
 very marrow. 
 
 "You well know that Nancy Sparrow 
 won t even look at me, Nancy," poor Charlie 
 faltered. 
 
 "She d have to look at you if you grabbed 
 her good and hard and shook her and made 
 her listen to you." Nancy advised this 
 course of action well knowing that the most 
 vigorous pioneer methods of love warfare 
 had a hundred per cent, chance to succeed. 
 
 140
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "I m skeered of her, Nancy," poor 
 Charlie pleaded. 
 
 "Skeer never caught a woman for a man 
 yet!" Nancy called over her shoulder as she 
 swung away down the road, being wise 
 enough to leave seeds to sprout and grow 
 after she had planted them. 
 
 Her method of handling the apex of the 
 eternal triangle was just as skillful if more 
 direct. She encountered Breckenridge 
 Kyle in front of the Eliz^abethtown Tavern 
 and bespoke him thus. 
 
 "Breck, Nancy Sparrow is going to marry 
 Charlie Friend Saturday night, and you are 
 invited to mind your own business. If you 
 don t I 11 ask Mr. Robinson to put a stop 
 to your gallivanting. Uncle Tom Sparrow 
 saved his life from two Injuns and he won t 
 let one of his clerks bring trouble on Uncle 
 Tom." 
 
 "Whew, Nancy, stop and get your 
 breath," Breck laughed, but Nancy could 
 
 141
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 see that her shot had told. Breckenridge s 
 position in Mr. Robinson s land claim office 
 was a very ambitious and lucrative one, com 
 bining the maximum of returns with the min 
 imum of effort. "I Ve got to gallivant 
 somebody because I can t get you," Breck- 
 enridge dared. "Nan Sparrow looks like 
 you faded out." 
 
 "Sometimes gallivanting backwards draws 
 a woman. Try that on me, Breck," Nancy 
 provoked with a laugh that floated up even 
 to the treetops as she again went on her 
 way. The flash of her violet eyes over her 
 shoulder at the tall young gentleman in 
 small clothes and ruffled shirt was a con 
 descending challenge from superior to in 
 ferior. 
 
 "God, what a girl!" Breckenridge mut 
 tered under his breath and did not suspect 
 that Clinton Meriweather, standing on the 
 steps of the Elizabethtown Tavern near by, 
 had heard the exclamation, and jealously 
 
 142
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 echoed it. Breck was about to disregard her 
 advice and follow Nancy, but Clinton was 
 before him. 
 
 "Let me carry that cloth for you, Nancy," 
 Clinton offered as his stride only slightly 
 shortened to her step, for Nancy Hanks was 
 very long and strong limbed and minced 
 neither steps nor manners. 
 
 "Your broadcloth figger ain t suited to 
 carry homespun, Clint," Nancy laughed as 
 she refused to let him share her burden. 
 
 tl~\ T 5) 
 
 Mine is. 
 
 "You look like a peach blossom in that 
 pink gown, Nancy," Clinton laughed in an 
 swer. "I never saw such a color except in 
 some Chinee vases at Uncle Clint s in Phil 
 adelphia that cost a fortune and a half. 
 Where did you get it?" 
 
 "Carded and spun and wove it, and dyed 
 it with juice from the polk berries you helped 
 me gather last fall. I sold three bolts of 
 it to that Quaker merchant to carry back 
 
 143
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 to Philadelphia yesterday. I was just 
 a-coming to bring the money to you in the 
 bank, when I had got what s coming from 
 this from Giles Claibourne." 
 
 "You have n t let me go into the woods 
 with you for three months, Nancy, and when 
 I go to see you we sit with Mr. Berry and 
 the family. You don t even come to the 
 gate with me. Why?" The young banker 
 put his question with a real hurt in his keen 
 blue eyes. 
 
 "Want the truth, Clint?" Nancy asked, 
 looking him straight in the eyes, without a 
 flicker in her purple ones. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You was kinder getting a habit of hold 
 ing hands with me, and honest, Clint, I was 
 afraid sometime I might get careless and 
 squeeze back and break a finger bone for 
 you. If a woman s hand is overstrong a 
 man s is in danger a-holding of it." And 
 as she spoke Nancy paused on the threshold 
 
 144
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 of Mr. Claibourne s general store and this 
 time the purple eyes challenged an equal. 
 
 "Damn you, Nancy Hanks," Clinton 
 stormed, enraged at being laughed at and 
 also at the fact that the very handsome, 
 young and prosperous proprietor of the store 
 was hurrying forward to take the bolts of 
 cloth from Nancy, which he was sure she 
 would turn over to him. The plum broad 
 cloth upon his own slim, straight back was 
 in this instance to be outshone by the but 
 ternut homespun upon the back of Nancy s 
 avowed suitor, which he had bought straight 
 off her loom at a fair price and fair only. 
 
 "Double same to you, Clint, and good 
 luck," Nancy answered his oath with a flash 
 of her white teeth and dimples as she turned 
 and greeted Mr. Claibourne. 
 
 There was nothing for the banker to do 
 but tip his three-cornered hat ceremoniously 
 and betake himself to his banking. But the 
 rage that had risen in his heart had been a
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 revealing flame and showed homespun 
 Nancy enthroned there. He was aghast. 
 And he was rebellious. Though only 
 twenty-five years old, Clinton Meriweather s 
 position in Elizabethtown was a command 
 ing one and he had made the Elizabethtown 
 Bank grow strong and prosperous. His 
 vigorous, far-seeing mind had great pride of 
 opinion and he was accustomed to dominate, 
 with courtesy and charm it is true, every 
 body with whom he came in contact. The 
 men were most of them in his financial 
 clutches and both feared and liked him. 
 The girls and young matrons of the social 
 upper strata of the little city spoiled him 
 and adored him and he was accustomed to 
 the most vivid female adulation. No 
 woman opposed his attentions except high- 
 headed Nancy, who flouted him to his face 
 while drawing him with a charm which 
 burned in his veins and ate into his very 
 vitals. 
 
 146
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 There was in Nancy Hanks a great depth 
 and height and breadth of the woman ele 
 ment which by nature attracted and fired the 
 brains of the men with whom she came in 
 contact, as well as their hearts. They 
 wanted to talk with her, to argue with her, 
 and to put an imprint on her mind. She 
 was as a spark in tow to a man like Meri- 
 weather, who regarded all women as lesser 
 human beings. His situation was in a man 
 ner desperate. He had set his ambition on 
 a marriage that would help him build the 
 house of Meriweather as solidly as he had 
 built the Elizabethtown Bank, and he had 
 paid court to a certain very elegant and 
 wealthy damsel in his Uncle Clinton s aris 
 tocratic circle of friends in Philadelphia. 
 He had visioned her at the head of a polished 
 mahogany table, loaded with fine nappery, 
 silver and china, set in the dining-room of 
 the house about which he was already traf 
 ficking with MacGill and Berry. The 
 
 147
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 vision was now burned out by the sight of a 
 girl in a peach-blow homespun with a bur 
 den upon her head and a flame of life in her 
 eyes. He was a stricken man and he was 
 delirious with his fever. 
 
 In the meantime poor handsome Giles 
 Claibourne was having a brief hour of joy. 
 Nancy had turned the cloth over to him, and 
 while he was measuring it and the payment 
 for it, he was witness to a scene that would 
 have set any widower s heart to beating. 
 Three-year-old Gilly Claibourne had caught 
 sight of Nancy Hanks from behind his 
 father s counter and the reunion of the two 
 friends was joyous. Straight into her out 
 stretched arms the small boy flung himself, 
 and her red rose mouth met his budding lips 
 in the perfect embrace. His head snuggled 
 down on to her round breast and his arms 
 held tight as she cradled him a second, and 
 then flung him aloft far above her head, 
 
 148
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 and caught him as he fell squealing back into 
 the cradle. 
 
 "Got peppermints, Nancy?" he demanded 
 as he muzzled at her suspiciously. 
 
 "How 11 you trade?" asked Nancy with a 
 laugh as she set him down on his feet and 
 drew a paper parcel from her pocket, thus 
 putting her youthful lover on the same busi 
 ness footing as that on which his father 
 stood, and also young Banker Meriweather. 
 
 "A bushel and a peck of hugs around the 
 neck," the young peddler answered in a for 
 mula she had taught mm, and proceeded to 
 administer his pay at the same time he be 
 gan the use of his purchase, which gave 
 Nancy a sticky dab on her cheek to boot. 
 
 "And there she was down on the floor in 
 the middle of Claibourne s store, hugging his 
 offspring in a most unseemly manner," was 
 Miss Killebrew s report to Dame Evelyn 
 Robinson at a tea drinking the next day. 
 
 149
 
 "Poor Mr. Claibourne," sighed Mrs. Rob 
 inson, with concern for her favorite mer 
 chant s danger. 
 
 Her sympathy was well placed. 
 
 "Oh, Miss Nancy, how can you refuse 
 us?" the father of Gilly was pleading, even 
 as he counted the dimes, dollars and pence 
 into the pink palm, whose life line was dupli 
 cated with the sign that palmists say is in 
 the palms of the mothers of great men. 
 
 "I d never refuse Gilly anything," Nancy 
 returned, as she snatched a kiss from the 
 back of the now sticky three-year-old lover s 
 neck, and escaped toward the door. 
 
 "He 11 be out at Mr. Berry s asking for 
 a step-mother by tomorrow daylight," 
 threatened the young father, as Nancy 
 stepped out into the sunshine. 
 
 "Any man as goes courting for another 
 is in danger. I 11 kidnap him," Nancy an 
 swered the threat as she swung out of sight. 
 
 The temperature of Mr. Claibourne s heart 
 
 150
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 registered about the same degree as Clinton 
 Meriweather s over in the bank, who was 
 waiting in vain for Nancy to appear to de 
 posit in his care the money obtained for the 
 cloth from his rival. 
 
 Nancy had an unusually large number of 
 fish to fry that day. She went on across 
 town and turned off the road into a little 
 path that led to a small cabin in the clear 
 ing. An old crone sat by the door, and a 
 helpless young woman lay on a split-rail bed 
 in the corner. It was here that Elizabeth- 
 town s scandal was hiding itself, and Nancy 
 Hanks was the only woman in town brave 
 enough to seek its lair. 
 
 "How be you, Maggie?" Nancy ques 
 tioned as she bent tenderly and laid one of 
 her fine cool hands on the other girl s hot 
 suffering eyes. 
 
 "My time s come, Nancy," answered the 
 woman, who was about to pay alone the 
 price of a brief love shared with a mule-pack 
 
 151
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 merchant, who had gone on his way over the 
 mountains. 
 
 "Not until come daylight," the old mid 
 wife took her pipe out of her mouth to mum 
 ble. 
 
 "Oh, will you come to help me, Nancy?" 
 Maggie pleaded wildly. 
 
 "I 11 be here. Come, throw a rock at my 
 window, Granny Betts, if it s night," Nancy 
 promised and commanded. "Don t forgit 
 that no matter what happens you 11 have a 
 baby, Mag, all your own." The woman 
 flame in the purple eyes was like a stimulant 
 to the suffering girl, who caught the spark 
 of ecstasy. 
 
 When the next dawn came Nancy Hanks 
 let go of the girl s hands she had been hold 
 ing, while she went down into the great 
 shadow from which all women retrieve new 
 life, and took a wee human being into her 
 strong arms by way of welcome into a big 
 world. 
 
 152
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 It is recorded that the mule-merchant re 
 turned, and now a family in Pennsylvania 
 boasts that "Nancy Hanks officiated at my 
 grandmother s birth." 
 
 At the time, however, gossip in Elizabeth- 
 town had it that "Nancy Hanks was mixed 
 up in that Maggie Hurt affair." 
 
 Oh, big tender Nancy! 
 
 On the evening before that birth dawn, 
 Nancy had finished up the affairs of the tri 
 angle most satisfactorily, and she was rest 
 ing from her labors with great profundity 
 before old granny s pebble had been flung 
 to summon her to the ceremonial of birth. 
 And beside her reposed Nancy Sparrow, 
 smiling the soft smile of love s security. 
 Nancy had taken the young heart of putty 
 and stamped upon it the crude image of 
 Charlie Friend with the old but ever potent 
 strategy. 
 
 The two Nancys had met at sundown at 
 the gate of the home of Mr. Berry. 
 
 153
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Nancy," said Nancy Hanks, as she 
 slipped one of her strong arms about the 
 weak little cousin s trim waist, "I m mighty 
 glad you are going to have that new cabin 
 down on the Creek. I wish it was mine. I 
 love to live here with Uncle and Aunt Berry, 
 but I want my own cabin so bad that if you 
 don t take Charlie quick, I 11 set after him. 
 He s nigh as good looking as the cabin." 
 
 "Where d you see him?" asked little 
 cousin with a swift suspicion darting into her 
 shallow eyes. 
 
 "Oh, I was talkin with him over in Eliz- 
 abethtown a while. He says it is all fin 
 ished and ready to move into. I asked him 
 all about it. It s funny how a new house 
 makes a woman want a turkey-tail duster 
 and a man." Nancy spoke with the most 
 interested unconcern, but did not fail to note 
 the higher flaming of the suspicion in the 
 blue eyes questioning hers, the flame almost 
 crackling. 
 
 154.
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 There was no woman in Elizabethtown, 
 high or lowly, who would n t have been 
 frightened at the very faintest idea of en 
 tering sentimental competition with Nancy 
 Hanks. 
 
 The situation was thus made ripe for huge 
 Charlie to blunder into, by the light of the 
 moon, several hours later down at the Spar 
 row home. 
 
 After a good many minutes of tense si 
 lence, which puzzled and frightened him, he 
 awkwardly floundered into the right path. 
 
 "Saw Nancy Hanks down town today. 
 She s a mighty sprightly talker." 
 
 "What did she talk about?" 
 
 "Er er," Charlie paused, for he knew 
 it would not do to give an account of the 
 talk with Nancy, in view of the resolution 
 he had taken upon himself to accomplish 
 before the moon went down, if he turned into 
 a fiery fluid doing it. "She talked mostly 
 about the the cabin." 
 
 155
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 His hesitation did the business Nancy 
 Hanks had negotiated for him. 
 
 "Whose cabin?" Nancy Sparrow asked, 
 with a proprietary note in her voice that was 
 unmistakable, and which gave Charlie the 
 courage for the pioneer "grab" prescribed 
 by Nancy Hanks. 
 
 "Yo cabin and mine," he whispered 
 fiercely to the back of Nancy s neck, as he 
 came very near incapacitating her for life 
 by cracking all of her ribs. Nancy Spar 
 row was in radiant spirits as she told Nancy 
 Hanks all about it, staying at Uncle Berry s 
 to sleep with Nancy, so that the confidences 
 could have a long night session. 
 
 "Yes, I think Saturday night will be a 
 fine time to marry. After a woman has shot 
 down a man she oughter tend to him right 
 away," Nancy the conspirator had consented 
 with her last waking thought until Granny 
 Betts threw the pebble hours later. 
 
 The name of Breckenridge Kyle had not 
 
 156
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 been mentioned between them, and Nancy 
 Hanks knew that once captured, Charlie 
 Friend would know how to take care of his 
 own. 
 
 There are abundant records to show that 
 the life of Nancy Hanks was not an idle one. 
 
 157
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A ND while Nancy Hanks was growing 
 ** with the growth of the little border 
 town, what had become of Thomas Lincoln 
 back in the little wilderness settlement in 
 which she had left him? How were these 
 children of destiny to be drawn together 
 again? 
 
 "Did you see Tom, and when is he com 
 ing?" was the question which Nancy put to 
 Elder Jesse Head each time he passed 
 through Elizabethtown on his circuit rid 
 ing during all the years that passed between 
 her and the beloved Thomas. 
 
 "Tom s living and will be dying just in 
 the same tracks you left him in, Nancy," the 
 Elder would answer with a delighted twinkle 
 in his shrewd old eyes as he beheld the growth 
 
 158
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 in beaut y and wisdom his young favorite had 
 made. "He always says, Tell me bout 
 Xancy. And after I get through telling 
 and urge upon him the thought of coming 
 with me and beholding he retires ten miles 
 in the forest at the very thought of facing 
 you. Tom 11 die a tongue-tied bachelor un 
 less some woman uses force on him." 
 
 "Xo woman had better use force on Tom 
 Lincoln," Xancy Hanks had flared back 
 with her violet eyes in reply. 
 
 "Well, since Sallie Bush married Dan 
 Johnson and moved over here, I reckon Tom 
 is in no danger. Ever see Sallie?" 
 
 "I washed and dressed a ten-pound baby 
 for her last week," laughed Xancy. 
 
 "Then you forgave her for slighting Tom 
 at love feast ten years ago?" 
 
 "Xo, but a woman can t hold a grudge 
 against a ten-pound man baby, can she?" 
 Xancy answered. 
 
 "The good Lord fashions some women s 
 
 159
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 breasts and arms for cradle service to the 
 offspring of other women as well as her 
 own, Nancy, and you seem to be one. I 
 want to commend you fer standing by Mag 
 gie." 
 
 "Wait until I get that mule-packer and 
 make a daddy outen him for Maggie s baby, 
 then commend me, Elder," Nancy answered. 
 "Will you tell Tom Lincoln I say to be 
 a-coming over here as he promised me ten 
 years ago?" 
 
 "Yes, I 11 tell him and God bless you, 
 child, for a faithful and friendly heart," the 
 Elder answered as he and Nancy parted at 
 the door of the Elizabethtown Tavern. 
 
 The ten years Tom Lincoln and Jo Hanks 
 had lived in the parentless Hanks cabin 
 home had passed without anything more 
 eventful than life and death and cold and 
 heat and hunger and love. William Hanks 
 had moved away with a mate and left the 
 two boys alone, under the eye of Mordecai 
 
 160
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Lincoln and stern Susan, who had been 
 somewhat softened toward life in general 
 and Tom in particular, when he had made a 
 tiny coffin for her baby, who had never 
 breathed and in his own arms had shown it 
 to her and borne it out to the edge of the 
 clearing and buried it where she could look 
 after the grave herself. Big Mordecai had 
 not the skill to fashion so tiny and lovely a 
 thing as Tom had made of the little cedar 
 box. Nobody could then gauge the huge 
 reservoir of tenderness that lay under the 
 nature of the great, uncouth young man s 
 heart, but a hundred years later men under 
 stood him better. 
 
 The bachelor establishment of Tom and 
 Jo was cared for by the Runt, to whom Tom 
 paid a wage of two bits a week, which he con 
 sidered ample to define their relation as em 
 ployer and employee, rather than that of 
 master and slave. No papers up to that 
 time had ever been made out concerning the 
 
 161
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 freedom of the Runt, and the incident of the 
 stove-wood, the Sallie Bush singing book 
 and the love feast were forgotten by all con 
 cerned, except that the heart of Tom Lin 
 coln had freed his slave and was clean and 
 at rest on the subject. 
 
 And the years had brought very little in 
 the way of worldly goods to Tom Lincoln. 
 For his work he was poorly paid and as he 
 never made any point of enforcing his claims 
 much of the time he was not paid at all. 
 Mordecai Lincoln had considered his elder 
 son s claim to all the Lincoln property, 
 landed and personal, as beyond dispute, and 
 Tom was not the person to contest a claim. 
 He never even gave a thought to his rights to 
 patrimony but did the work in hand, and 
 haunted his beloved forests, dreaming great 
 dreams we must believe, from his final re 
 sults. The dreams of a man slow of growth, 
 silent and tender, are apt to be potent. He 
 was nearly thirty years old, nearing the age 
 
 162
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 at which the great-hearted Carpenter put 
 aside His tools and went forth to save man 
 kind, when His call came. 
 
 What Thomas took to be a call of need 
 from Nancy Hanks, made him take his tools 
 under his arms and go out in Nancy s world 
 to answer, with Runt the shadow folowing 
 him. And he found her at a crossing of 
 roads. 
 
 No matter how a woman may claim, de 
 clare and affirm her freedom, there are 
 snares set for her at the meeting of many 
 paths, and it is impossible for her to keep 
 out of them all. The keen brain of Clinton 
 Meriweather, banker, was at work on the 
 mechanism of a trap for Nancy Hanks, and 
 when it was finished he was himself caught. 
 
 For many days after, the revelation of 
 Nancy securely lodged in his heart, he shut 
 the door of that organ and went about his 
 business, determined to empty the shrine by 
 ignoring it. Pie found that impossible, for 
 
 163
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 the more his thoughts ignored Nancy and 
 engrossed themselves in the reckonings of 
 barter and sale, the more his heart thirsted 
 for her. The night of the full moon in 
 April was his undoing. 
 
 Nancy had been down to see Charlie 
 Friend and the infatuated wife she had 
 helped him obtain, and had started home 
 long enough before sundown to have reached 
 there before moon-up, but the budding 
 spring woods were too much for Nancj^ 
 Hanks and she began to loiter and love the 
 curling, budding, unspringing, blushing, 
 perfuming spring all around h er. She 
 greeted the little white violets with rapture, 
 she stepped carefully to keep from break 
 ing the tall white Indian pipes, and she 
 gathered the bronze trillium into a huge 
 bunch for drying for one of her medicinal 
 mixtures, which she slung over her shoulder 
 on a stout hickory stick she had picked up for 
 a whip stock. Just as she was on the edge 
 
 164-
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 of the clearing she stopped to listen, en 
 tranced to a mocking bird courtship, in 
 which the feathered suitor was risking burst 
 ing his little heart to gain an answering 
 cheep from a white blossoming dogswood 
 bough just below the pink-budded maple 
 Mmb on which he tilted and sang. The 
 final red gold rays of the sun were being 
 sifted out of the first beams of the full moon 
 and the opal glow wrapped Nancy around 
 like the veil of a bride. When she turned 
 from the last operatic flight of the small 
 feathered lover, she turned into the arms of 
 Clinton Meriweather, which closed on her 
 hungrily. 
 
 "Nancy, Nancy Hanks," he murmured, as 
 he pressed her lithe, strong body to his and 
 tried to find her lips with his own. And the 
 riot of youth in his veins called to the youth 
 in hers as she yielded to his pressure and 
 raised her face to his hunting. What 
 Nancy Hanks saw in the eyes of Clinton 
 
 165
 
 Meriweather made her draw away from him 
 and lay her hand on his breast to hold him 
 back from her. 
 
 "Don t, Clint, don t," she commanded, 
 trying to draw completely out of his arms. 
 
 But she was trying to stay a flood with a 
 woman s words, and his response to her sharp 
 command, in which there was also appeal, 
 was to force down her arm with his left, 
 while his right was sweeping her to him. 
 What the polished man of the world in 
 tended to do to the homespun woman no 
 body ever knew but himself, for the stout 
 hickory stick cut a gash across his blond 
 head and felled him like a slaughtered ox. 
 Nancy Hanks could defend herself. 
 
 It just happened that Dan Mitchell and 
 Sam Hardy were coming out of the wood 
 with sacks of sassafras roots for the cattle 
 on their backs, and to Nancy s call their re 
 sponse was swift. 
 
 "Ruffled hound! Hope you killed him," 
 
 166
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 said Dan, as he put his cowhide boot in un 
 der the broadcloth-covered side of the pros 
 trated gentleman and turned him on his 
 back. 
 
 "Oh, no, Dan!" exclaimed Nancy, as she 
 fell on her knees beside her prostrate suitor, 
 her anger spent by the blow, and anxiety 
 rising in its stead. 
 
 "He did n t do you a harm, did he, 
 Nancy?" asked Dan in a quiet voice, but 
 with the intent to kill in his eyes, as he de 
 manded the truth from his foster sister. 
 
 "No, Dan, no," Nancy answered, as she 
 looked him full in the face. 
 
 "Well, then he can live if he can," Dan 
 decreed, as he stooped down to see just 
 what damage she had done. "That knock 
 is no more than he deserved and maybe it 
 will let some sense into his gallivanting 
 head. Put down your pack, Sam, and let s 
 carry him to the Elizabethtown Tavern, 
 where he belongs." With which both men 
 167
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 deposited their burdens of sassafras and 
 lifted a new and bloody one. 
 
 "You go on home, Nancy, and nobody 
 won t know the difference," Dan com 
 manded, with more eye to the conventions 
 than Nancy, who had lifted the bleeding 
 head on her arm as the two men started to 
 go with their burden. 
 
 "And let him bleed to death? No!" an 
 swered Nancy as the little procession started, 
 which by the time it had reached its des 
 tination, had started a scandal in Elizabeth- 
 town which smoulders to this day. 
 
 "He was forcing Nancy and she hit him," 
 was the answer given by crude Dan right 
 and left to the questioning crowd that fol 
 lowed them. Even at that trying moment 
 the head of Nancy Hanks was not lowered 
 a fraction of an inch, and she was more oc 
 cupied with staunching the flow of blood, 
 which dyed crimson the breast and front and 
 sleeve of her homespun dress, than with pub- 
 168
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 lie opinion, then in the forming against her. 
 Though to be accurate, most of the ques 
 tioners turned from the injured banker 
 with the angry and unsympathetic remark : 
 "Served him right, Nancy Hanks!" 
 And Nancy s conduct through the whole 
 affair was entirely true to her character as 
 a child of nature. When the procession 
 reached the Elizabethtown Tavern, upon 
 whose ground and only floor were situated 
 the two large bachelor rooms of the banker, 
 Nancy called for linen, turpentine and hot 
 water, and proceeded to bathe and cleanse 
 the wound she had administered, while peo 
 ple were looking right and left for old Dr. 
 Cummins, who w r as as that moment up over 
 the Means Feed and Harness Shop, deep in 
 a game with a jug of Jamaica rum and ob 
 livious to the spectacular need of his serv 
 ices. 
 
 After Nancy had succeeded in drawing 
 the gap together with a long needle, which 
 
 169
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 she had bent and heated in a flame, she was 
 proceeding to bathe the gore from the pal 
 lid face, when the famous scene with Dame 
 Evelyn Robinson ensued of which the fol 
 lowing is a well constructed account. 
 
 The very much flustered and bewildered 
 matron arrived at the door in high color and 
 great indignation at the details which had 
 been carried to her of the outrage upon this 
 bachelor member of her circle of friends. 
 Duly escorted by her husband, she had has 
 tened to the scene as soon as she had ac 
 quired his suitable escort and accomplished 
 a suitable toilet, during which time her pros 
 trated friend might have bled to death, if 
 the woman in the case had regarded the 
 questions of convention or costume. 
 
 "Stand aside, girl, and allow Mr. Meri- 
 weather s friends access to him," she com 
 manded, as she fairly swept her draperies 
 close to her as if to keep them from defile 
 ment. 
 
 170
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Come, keep the hot towel to the wound, 
 while I get the blood offen him," Nancy an 
 swered, so intent upon her ministrations that 
 she failed to notice the belligerency directed 
 against her. As she spoke, she moved aside 
 so that Dame Robinson could get a full view 
 of the bloody man, the bloody pillow and her 
 own bloody dress, for upon the white cotton 
 of her homespun the gore was doubly ter 
 rible. 
 
 Dame Robinson, true to form, quietly and 
 artistically swooned. 
 
 "And Evelyn Robinson s own ma shot a 
 catamount that was making off with a 
 chicken and skun -him fore her man got 
 home," old Mr. Beckett, the keeper of the 
 Elizabethtown Tavern, muttered to himself 
 sadly, after he had helped the abashed hus 
 band cart the useless woman away in her 
 carriage with its high stepping bays. 
 
 It was after midnight before Nancy 
 Hanks had been willing to leave her patient 
 171
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 with Granny Belts, who had come with bas 
 ket and snuff stick to be installed as watcher 
 nurse, and by six o clock the next morning 
 she was back to see to her bandaging, for she 
 was accustomed to look after the odds and 
 ends of surgery for Doctor Cummins dur 
 ing his frequent rum sieges. That day the 
 whole of Elizabethtown whirled and raged 
 with scandal, and probably brave Nancy, 
 fighting with all her skill to keep down the 
 fever of the patient, and keep the wound in 
 a condition for healing, was the only inhabi 
 tant who was calm about the matter. 
 
 The sick room would have been overrun 
 to the patient s great hurt if Nancy had not 
 made a plea for him to the grim old tavern 
 keeper. 
 
 "Just keep folks away until the fever goes 
 and it begins to heal, and he gets his senses," 
 she begged. 
 
 "I ll do that thing," old Eph Beckett 
 promised and that promise he grimly kept. 
 
 172
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 And while Nancy fought for the very life 
 of the man she had prostrated, his near and 
 dear friends lacerated and bruised her rep 
 utation until it was as black and blue as the 
 area of his wound. Those with a sense of 
 humor, laughed over the account of Dame 
 Robinson s assault and swoon, and the 
 knowledge that this was so added fuel to her 
 flames of anger. She preened herself and 
 bided her time. 
 
 It came the first day upon which the pa 
 tient found himself able to be raised on a 
 pillow and take broth from a bowl held by 
 Nancy. His eyes had been following her 
 for several days, but she had hushed him with 
 authority whenever he had tried to speak. 
 Today his strength was enough to assert 
 itself. 
 
 "I have something to say to you, Nancy," 
 
 he said, as he laid his bandaged head back 
 
 on the pillow with only a fraction of the 
 
 care he had been using in so disposing it, 
 
 173
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 which betokened its satisfactory degree of 
 healing. 
 
 "Ask Granny Betts for it," Nancy an 
 swered him quickly, and as she spoke she 
 picked up a bundle over by the door and 
 walked out of the room in the most casual 
 manner, and not with the air of shaking the 
 dust from her feet. 
 
 It was in the fret of this betrayal that 
 Dame Robinson found the banker an hour 
 later, and it is to the credit of his self-con 
 trol that he kept calm and let her babble on 
 until he had extracted the entire situation 
 from her. 
 
 "Of course as none of us were your im 
 mediate family, it was impossible for us to 
 force this girl to leave your rooms, Clinton," 
 she was rounding out her tale by saying. 
 
 "Especially as none of my friends were 
 quite qualified to take her place," he added 
 in the gentlest of voices. "Located where 
 174
 
 it was, the wound was rather dangerous, with 
 Cummins in delirium tremens." 
 
 "Well, since she struck you while you 
 were here Mrs. Robinson paused in a 
 veritable panic as she had apparently put 
 her foot into her own words. 
 
 "While I was asking her to marry me. 
 She was refusing me with vigor," Clinton 
 Meriweather, banker, remarked quietly with 
 his keen and very beautiful blue eyes hold 
 ing those of Dame Robinson s sternly. 
 The banker was proving himself a gallant 
 gentleman when under test. 
 
 "Mar ry you?" Dame Robinson fairly 
 gasped. 
 
 "When I get her answer, I 11 tell my 
 friends, favorable or unfavorable," the 
 banker continued. "I 11 surely tell you and 
 Mr. Robinson among the first for my close 
 association in business with him makes me 
 sure of his sympathy, whichever way my 
 175
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 luck runs." Banker Meriweather knew 
 that Dame Robinson knew that the Eliza- 
 bethtown Bank was financing her husband s 
 largest cotton deal for the season, and he 
 used that knowledge adroitly. 
 
 Dame Robinson in her velour silk and 
 lace fled the situation and left it to Granny 
 Betts. 
 
 When Nancy failed to return to her pa 
 tient for twenty-four hours, he fretted him 
 self into a fever and granny had to appeal 
 to her. She came fluttering back to her 
 nursling on swift wings. 
 
 Nancy Hanks had drawn back from the 
 fierce arms of passion, but she was utterly in 
 capable of drawing away from weak upheld 
 arms of adoration, and she soothed the pale 
 scarred head against her fragrant pink 
 cheek. 
 
 "I m sorry, Nancy." 
 
 "I m sorry, too." 
 
 They were young and it was May day. 
 176
 
 "Will you marry me, Nancy?" 
 
 There was no affirmative bond given to 
 that question by Nancy Hanks, only the 
 tenderness that it was her nature to give to 
 weakness. Then she fled the sick room, 
 never to return. 
 
 Through the mediums of the tongues of 
 Granny Betts, who had been present at the 
 entire interview, and Dame Evelyn Robin 
 son, it became known that Nancy Hanks had 
 been "asked" by Banker Clinton Meri- 
 weather and that his fate was still in the 
 balance of her shapely hands. The next 
 ten days were the most exciting that Eliza- 
 bethtown had experienced since the last In 
 dian raid and the strife was civil warfare. 
 All the homespun gentry guffaw r ed over the 
 fact that Nancy had "lammed" the young 
 plutocrat, but they liked him and in the main 
 were for him and his suit, now that they un 
 derstood it to be a legitimate one. 
 
 "Larruping a husband proper before she 
 177
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 gets him is a mighty good way for a woman 
 to start housekeeping," Mr. Sid Sanders, 
 the stage driver to and from Louisville, re 
 marked. "Now you ve done put your 
 mark on the banker you better marry him, 
 Nancy." 
 
 "Marrying is putting a string around a 
 woman s wrists that keeps her from larrup 
 ing a husband after she gets him, Uncle Sid," 
 answered Nancy with a laugh. 
 
 "Yaas, but the bonds of matrimony is 
 mostly made of apron strings," was Uncle 
 Sid s retort as he started on his journey. 
 
 178
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 AND while the friends of Nancy laughed 
 over her escapade and kept up a run 
 ning fire of curiosity as to what her final 
 answer to her most spectacular wooing was 
 to be, the broadcloth circle in which Clinton 
 Meriweather had his social being waxed in 
 dignant but prudent. A few words from 
 the masculine heads of the families involved 
 in various banking schemes as to the advis 
 ability of "waiting to see which way the cat 
 jumped," in the matter of the banker s fate, 
 kept the feminine riot at the point of smoul 
 dering. And women are not at all behind 
 men in worldly judgment, and the future 
 mistress of the handsomest house ever built 
 in the township, whose second story was be 
 ing laid in purple brick from the energetic 
 179
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 MacGill and Berry firm, would have to be 
 reckoned with. 
 
 "After all the girl is very beautiful and 
 men will be men," sighed Dame Evelyn Rob 
 inson as she looked contentedly at young 
 Jean, over whose head drooped that of the 
 rescued Breckenridge Kyle, as they sat to 
 gether before the spinnet at the other end 
 of the long parlor. 
 
 "I m glad he 11 get on his feet and out 
 tomorrow, so as to hunt her down," chuc 
 kled Mr. Gideon Robinson. "I bet Tom 
 Sparrow a hogshead of tobacco she flouts 
 him after all." 
 
 And the wager on the subject between 
 Mr. Robinson and Tom Sparrow was not 
 the only one laid in Elizabethtown as to 
 whether or not Nancy Hanks would marry 
 the banker she had assaulted. By Satur 
 day afternoon, May fifteenth, the tension 
 had become like unto that out at the trotting 
 track, which had been laid down two years 
 
 180
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 before, where roan two-year-olds could race 
 bays of like years. 
 
 And it was upon that date that the young 
 banker got into his small clothes and upon 
 his feet again. Looking very pale and in 
 terest-inspiring, with the scar across his tem 
 ple, he stood taking the air upon the steps 
 of the Elizabethtown Tavern, and also tak 
 ing the congratulations of his friends, mas 
 culine and feminine, who began to congre 
 gate around him. Dame Evelyn stood be 
 side him, while Jean and Breckenridge had 
 paused to greet him and chaff with Milly 
 Hume, Buford Clark and several more 
 young bloods with elaborately dimity-clad 
 girls on their arms. And if the world of 
 fashion was well represented on the Square, 
 so also was the world of homespun. Aunt 
 Lucy Berry and Aunt Elizabeth Sparrow 
 were down with Mrs. Sam Hardstay, trad 
 ing at the Clairbourne store, and Mrs. Lytsie 
 and Mrs. Hull were on the same errand, 
 
 181
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 having their daughters with them. In fact 
 representative Elizabethtown was congre 
 gated when Nancy Hanks and Mrs. Charlie 
 Friend turned into the Square at the corner 
 on which the Elizabethtown Tavern stood, 
 thus reaching the very center of the stage 
 before they knew they had made their en 
 trance. 
 
 When Nancy Hanks suddenly looked up 
 to see Clinton Meriweather, with her and his 
 world as a background, gazing down at her 
 with his heart in his handsome eyes, the mo 
 ment was, to say the least, dramatic. 
 
 For a long moment they stood taking each 
 other s measure, and who shall say what the 
 result of their regard would have been, if 
 Thomas Lincoln had n t walked from out 
 the forest, around the corner and stopped 
 ten paces from Nancy, his eyes on her face 
 and the rest of the world outside of the range 
 of his consciousness. 
 
 Even in the group of large pioneer men 
 
 182
 
 he loomed tall and broad. His deerskin 
 trousers were stuffed into rawhide boots and 
 girted in the one white shirt he had ever 
 possessed, which Nancy had made for him, 
 and which had been a cherished treasure. 
 It was open away from his brawny throat 
 as usual, and upon the shock of black hair, 
 stiff from a ten years lack of greasing, was 
 a coonskin cap, from which dangled behind 
 the long bushy tail of the animal. In the 
 hollow of one arm rested his rifle and his 
 other balanced his bundle of carpenter s 
 tools, wrapped in his leathern apron, on his 
 broad shoulder. On his square- jawed, clean- 
 cut face there was the quiet of the wilder 
 ness, until his dark eyes focused themselves 
 on Nancy, as she stood poised towards him 
 with a flame of delight in her black-rimmed 
 purple eyes. 
 
 "Nancy," he said as a great, hungry smile 
 spread all over his somber, still face. 
 "Nancy, Nancy!" 
 
 183
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Tom, oh, Tom," was Nancy s answer 
 with the lilt of the mocking bird in her white 
 throat, as she flew to him and clung to his 
 arm and the old gun. 
 
 With that cry Clinton Meriweather was 
 answered, only at the moment nobody knew 
 it. They might have surmised it by the way 
 all thought of the banker, whom she had 
 been just about to greet in the sight of the 
 populace, passed from her consciousness as 
 she drew the burly woodsman, the like of 
 whom Elizabethtown had not seen in five 
 years, across the street to the front of the 
 Claibourne store, where her aunts stood. 
 These relatives had noted the whole scene 
 and their greeting to the intruder was not 
 overly cordial. 
 
 In the meantime Clinton Meriweather s 
 world had closed around him, hopeful that 
 the crisis was passed, and flocked into the 
 tavern to drink tea with him. 
 
 184
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "When 11 I send for the tobacco, Brother 
 Sparrow?" questioned Mr. Robinson, as he 
 and Sparrow were watering rum together at 
 the tavern bar out of sight of the tea party. 
 
 "Oh, shoo, Nancy was jest upsot by the 
 crowd and seeing Tom, who was a brother 
 to her fore her folks died. Give a man a 
 courting chanst, can t you?" Thus Tom 
 Sparrow put off the banker. 
 
 There were more events crowded into the 
 first hours of Thomas Lincoln s residence in 
 Elizabethtown than had transpired in all of 
 his twenty-eight years put together, or so it 
 seemed to him, and through it all he was 
 actively conscious only of Nancy Hanks. 
 
 "Well, well, Thomas, how you have 
 grown," remarked Uncle Berry, as he pushed 
 his chair back from the supper table and took 
 out the gold snuff box and refreshed himself, 
 brushing a fleck from a fine ruffle Nancy had 
 put upon his shirt front as a badge of his ex- 
 
 185
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 panding prosperity. "And you re wel 
 come, my boy, mighty welcome, as you may 
 have guessed from Nancy s face." 
 
 "Nancy s growed too," was Thomas bril 
 liant remark, as he smiled a smile as full of 
 pride over Nancy s beauty as if he had pro 
 duced it, though in fact his arrival had added 
 to it no little. 
 
 "Young men had better walk respectful 
 before Nancy, for she has got a powerful 
 grip on a hickory stick and Mr. Berry 
 was saying to Nancy s vast confusion, when 
 Ned Berry cut into the conversation with 
 practical intent. 
 
 "Say, Tom, I can put you to work to 
 morrow on the Meriweather house at a good 
 wage," he said eagerly. "We re mightily 
 in need of the fancy work you and Jo was 
 learning when I was over to Lincoln Set 
 tlement last year." 
 
 "It 11 be a fitting thing for Tom to get 
 here in time to put a lick or two on Nancy s 
 
 186
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 house," remarked Uncle Tom Sparrow, who 
 had come to greet his nephew, thus trying 
 cannily to get a statement of intentions from 
 Nancy, by which he could settle his wager. 
 
 Xancy s answer was to rise to her feet 
 without a glance in his direction. 
 
 "Let s go out in the woods before it is 
 plum dark, Tom," she said. "I suspect 
 Piedy of a new calf and I want to find her 
 and house her tonight. The calf might be 
 weak and make bear bait." 
 
 "Don t think she s got any notion of flout 
 ing Meriweather, do you, Brother Berry, 
 drat the girl? " Tom Sparrow inquired anx 
 iously after Tom and Xancy had gone. 
 
 "I consider speculating on courting con 
 niptions a waste of time, Brother Sparrow," 
 Mr. Berry answered sagely. 
 
 "Maybe Tom Lincoln will put a spoke in 
 that wheel," spoke up Aunt Lucy from the 
 head of the table, upon which she was rest 
 ing her elbows before beginning to clear up 
 187
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 the debris. There has not been invented 
 any better detecter of love s vagaries than a 
 woman s intuition. 
 
 "Shoo, Nancy would n t look at a shift 
 less fellow like Tom, with no more than a 
 shirt to his back," laughed Mr. Sparrow. 
 "I reckon my tobacco is safe." 
 
 Fifteen nights had the old moon, who had 
 looked down upon the wooings of count 
 less generations of man and woman kind, 
 risen over the tree-tops in the forest sur 
 rounding Elizabethtown since Clinton 
 Meriweather had met Nancy Hanks under 
 the budding boughs of early May and at 
 tempted to seize her in rough hadns. Later, 
 each night, had it shone down upon the flow 
 ering and sprouting and now it only glanced 
 in toward morning, leaving the early watch 
 to the mass of stars, which seemed to Tom 
 and Nancy to swarm just above the tree- 
 tops as they walked out under them in the 
 fading twilight. The search for the calf 
 
 188
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 was forgotten and they sat side by side upon 
 the trunk of a tree Ned had felled the week 
 before, to use in timbering the fine Meri- 
 weather house, being built for Nancy. 
 
 Tom s face was lifted to the stars and 
 Nancy could see that his lips were moving 
 in the dusk and his face was solemn and still. 
 
 "What made you come at last, Tom?" she 
 asked, and there was the wooing note in her 
 throat that had been in the cheep which had 
 answered the mocking bird lover s demand. 
 
 "Word came to me, Nancy, by a trader, 
 that a man had tried to force you, and I 
 greased my gun and come to kill him," was 
 the quiet answer in Tom s deep voice. 
 "I m just saying thanky to God I find you 
 safe, honey bird." There was the croon in 
 his voice which had stilled Nancy s five-year- 
 old fears, and now it fell into her heart like 
 the echo of one of its own throbs, which were 
 rocking her round breasts high and low. 
 
 "He did n t do nothing to me, Tom, I just 
 
 189
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 did n t did n t want him," Nancy said after 
 a minute s stillness. 
 
 Then they turned to each other, moved by 
 one motif Nancy was crushed in Thomas 
 Lincoln s strong arms and he cradled her 
 on his breast with a tenderness she had long 
 known, and for which she now knew her 
 woman s soul had waited. Her heart beat 
 on his with the great, slow, strong pulses of 
 perfect mating, and her red lips drank in 
 his love like a chalice takes a sacred wine of 
 life. 
 
 "Oh, Nancy, I ain t fittin for you," was 
 his first cry after the fusion. 
 
 "Nobody but you, Tom, never," was her 
 steadfast answer, as she drew his cheek down 
 and pressed it against her breast. 
 
 "Nobody but you, Nancy," he ratified. 
 
 "Don t you never cut and grease your 
 hair, since I left you, Tom?" she laughed as 
 she sobbed, looking down into the solemn 
 gray eyes raised to hers, thus breaking a ten- 
 
 190
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 sion which the watchful stars must have felt, 
 so potent was it to become in the destiny of 
 one of their kindred worlds. 
 
 His answer was the first audible laugh 
 that Thomas Lincoln had ever given forth 
 as he raised his head from her breast, and 
 again took her into her old, accustomed 
 cradle of his arms. 
 
 "Sure you 11 be able to trim me up into a 
 husband, Nancy?" he asked. 
 
 "I am sure," answered Nancy with entire 
 confidence, as she ran her capable hand over 
 the beloved black shock. "Saturday week 
 will be June 12th, and that will do," she de 
 cided, after rapidly counting her days. 
 
 Tom s answer was his cheek laid gently 
 against hers. 
 
 "Now let s talk," Nancy said, with a 
 thirst in her voice as if she had for many 
 years been silent. 
 
 Late into the fragrant night hours they 
 questioned and answered, and all marauders 
 
 191
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 were turned aside from their communion. 
 The crickets and the katydids and the tree 
 toads muted their burr to a mere chorus to 
 the soft duet of their happy voices. The 
 nesting birds above their heads chirped a 
 sleepy commendation to the human nest- 
 planning going on below them, and fluffed 
 drowsy wings above the young lives they 
 were hovering. 
 
 "Charlie and Ned will help raise us a 
 cabin down on the creek, near Charlie s, in a 
 few days. You can make the furniture lit 
 tle by little," Nancy planned with her slim 
 fingers molded into his huge hand by a 
 pressure which would have hurt a fine lady, 
 but which the strength in her own gave back 
 in equal measure. 
 
 "I ve got the money to buy a bit of land. 
 Here it is, honey bird," Tom agreed, and he 
 reached down in each boot and drew out two 
 pouches made of moleskin and heavy with 
 
 192
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 coin and script, thus with all his worldly 
 goods endowing Nancy before the ceremony 
 which it is usual to have accompany such a 
 bestowal. 
 
 "I ve got some money too, and we 11 buy 
 it together," Nancy said, as she laid the for 
 tune on the stump beside her. 
 
 "I can t believe it is true," poor Thomas 
 suddenly faltered, as he drew Nancy into his 
 arms again. "I ve been so lonesome all my 
 life, Nancy, with you lost to me. I ain t 
 much but I ve never harmed nobody," and 
 with his cheek pressed to the soft haven she 
 had shown him poor inarticulate, unlettered 
 Thomas Lincoln poured into the heart of 
 his mate all the pent-up humiliations, dis 
 couragements, longings, strivings and ambi 
 tions that had filled his silent self-contained 
 life. 
 
 "If I had n t learned to pray to God, 
 Nancy, I could n t have stood it, but Elder 
 
 193
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Head helped me to that," he said at last, as 
 he rested content against her shoulder with 
 her hand stroking his hair. 
 
 "I wish Elder Head was a Presbyterian 
 instead of a Methodist," Nancy said. 
 "Both of them just sprinkles, and what s 
 the difference?" 
 
 "Presbyterians declare against slavery 
 and I ve got to hold with em," Tom said as 
 he sat up and threw back his head like a 
 war horse scenting the fray. 
 
 "Of course we 11 hold with them that ev 
 erybody ought to go free," Nancy assented, 
 as she rose to her feet and took Tom s for 
 tune from the tree trunk beside her. "But 
 let s get Elder Head to marry us, as there 
 ain t no Presbyterian preacher in town now. 
 I 11 be glad to have him." 
 
 "Keep talking that word marry, Nancy, 
 so as I 11 get it in my head before I have 
 to let you go away from me in the house," 
 Tom said as he and Nancy walked hand and 
 
 194
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 hand away from the place of their betrothal, 
 which had been out in God s open as had the 
 betrothal of the first man and the first 
 woman. 
 
 And hand and hand they went into the 
 clearing and to the back door of the Berry 
 home, which was dark and hovering deep 
 sleep. Tom was about to take Nancy into a 
 good-night embrace, when a shadow fell be 
 tween them. 
 
 The Runt rose from the doorstep and 
 flung himself with a laughing sob down in 
 the dust at Nancy s feet and buried his 
 woolly head in her skirts as his long arms 
 embraced her knees. 
 
 "Howdy, Miss Nancy, howdy," he gur 
 gled in the depths of emotional joy, which 
 is the characteristic of his race. 
 
 "Why, Runt, where did you come from?" 
 Nancy cried with welcome in her voice, as 
 she patted the woolly head and then pushed 
 Runt back on his flat heels. 
 
 195
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "I come with Marse Tom. We shot a 
 deer and toting it made me behind him on 
 the road." 
 
 "I told you to call me Mister Tom and 
 not Marse Tom, Runt," said Tom sternly. 
 "Somebody 11 be thinking you belong to 
 me." 
 
 "Yessir," answered the Runt meekly. 
 "But lessen somebody makes me I ain t 
 a-going to say I se a free nigger." 
 
 "Well, go and get in the hay in the barn," 
 Nancy commanded quickly, thus stopping 
 an argument which had gone on for twelve 
 years. With a chuckle the Runt obeyed, 
 having for once said the last word on the 
 sore subject. 
 
 The old moon got around in time to see 
 Thomas Lincoln for a last time take Nancy 
 Hanks in his strong arms and dismiss her 
 into the silent house with an embrace whose 
 force was ordained to produce power, as 
 surely as were the great coordinated parts of 
 
 196
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 the driving machine in the steamboat Robert 
 Fulton had just launched for the first time 
 on the Hudson River at about that date. 
 
 187,
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE ten days before their marriage sped 
 by Thomas and Nancy so fleetly that 
 they could hardly count them. If her fam 
 ily and friends disapproved of her marriage, 
 they failed to say so, and the whole Eliza- 
 bethtown "wished Nancy well," though pre 
 dicting that she was "throwing herself 
 away," having "gone through the woods and 
 picked up a crooked stick." As she had 
 predicted, Charlie Friend and Ned Berry 
 were glad to help Tom raise a big one-room 
 cabin, almost the exact counterpart of the 
 one into which he had carried Nancy on her 
 arrival from Virginia into the Wilderness, 
 and the last three days before the solemn 
 event he had free for making a few neces- 
 
 198
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 sary pieces of furniture. Thursday after 
 noon he spent setting the strong post upon 
 which he was going to nail the split rails to 
 hold the cords for the swinging of the feather 
 bed, which the aunts Lucy and Lizzie were 
 industriously stuffing into a tick Nancy had 
 woven, even while she was saving the down 
 of wild fowl, thus making the bed she was to 
 lie in. While he was at work Nancy came 
 in the door, flung herself into his arms and 
 began to cry with her cheek pressed to his 
 hairy breast, from which as usual the hickory 
 shirt fell away. 
 
 "Hush-e, hush-e," he crooned, with the old 
 quieting charm. He did n t ask the cause of 
 the outburst, he just cradled and hummed. 
 Tom Lincoln always used words as a last re 
 sort. 
 
 "I had to go to Clinton Meriweather s 
 bank for the money to pay for the land," 
 she sobbed. 
 
 "Didn t he speak you fair?" demanded 
 
 199
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Tom, as the muscles in his tender arms tight 
 ened. 
 
 "Yes, and he s going to Philadelphia to 
 night," Nancy said, controlling her sobs but 
 with her arms creeping up around Tom s 
 neck. "He thinks I was n t square with 
 him." 
 
 "Well, thinking don t hurt nobody," Tom 
 soothed, as he put her from him gently and 
 went on nailing the rails for their nuptial 
 couch. "Maybe it 11 help you to put a little 
 elbow grease in the way of polishing on that 
 table I split out for you this morning over 
 there in the corner. Do you want to sleep 
 with your head east or north?" 
 
 "North," answered Nancy with the color 
 rising up to the very edge of her purple 
 eyes. Tom laughed and kissed her, thus 
 restoring her equilibrium, but sealing up 
 within her the hurt of her interview with 
 Clinton Meriweather. 
 
 And the ordeal had been a hard one. 
 
 200
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Xancy had hoped to find other clients in 
 the bank, but Clinton was alone when she 
 entered, and immediately came over to the 
 railing that separated his safe and desk 
 from the rest of the room, and stood beside 
 her. It was the first time they had faced 
 each other since the long moment when 
 Thomas Lincoln had stepped between them 
 and at the sight of her, with the love lustre 
 upon her face and body, had risen in the 
 heart of the shrewd man of the world an 
 overwhelming desire to battle for what he 
 wanted. And in his passion he was a for 
 midable adversary. 
 
 "Do you fully realize what you are doing 
 in marrying this Lincoln, Xancy?" he asked 
 with only quiet and gentleness in his cul 
 tured voice. 
 
 "Yes," answered Xancy with a proud up 
 lifting of her beautiful head. 
 
 "I don t believe you do and I want you 
 to let me put it to you plainly. I ask it be- 
 201
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 cause because I think my love for you 
 gives me the right." 
 
 The demand appealed to Nancy s sense of 
 both justice and generosity. 
 
 "Yes," she answered again with tears deep 
 in her eyes for what she could not help but 
 see the strong man was suffering. 
 
 "In your twenty-third year you are mar 
 rying a man your inferior in every way, who 
 is too old for you to raise to your own stand 
 ard. He can neither read nor write, and it 
 is not likely that he will be able to take care 
 of you. I have offered you everything to 
 make a woman s life complete. I ask you 
 to stop and think, before it is too late." 
 
 Could a woman have been more fully 
 tempted? 
 
 "I love him," Nancy answered with a 
 flame in her eyes which is a race signal which 
 must be obeyed if great results are to be 
 obtained. "I thank you, Clint, but I love 
 Tom Lincoln." 
 
 202
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Then that s all, Nancy," answered the 
 banker as his keen mind signaled his hot and 
 ravished heart the uselessness of protest. 
 "I m going to Philadelphia by tonight s 
 stage and Mr. Robinson will attend to the 
 banking until I get back. Your account is 
 all in order. I hope you are going to be 
 happy. If you are not " a grim line came 
 around his mouth and a spark struck out 
 of his eyes, which he quickly veiled. 
 "Good-by." 
 
 The grimness in his powerful face and 
 voice frightened Nancy, and sent her flying 
 to Tom. What was it in the gentle, rough, 
 strong frontiersman which made destiny se 
 lect him to mate with Xancy Hanks instead 
 of one of the most intellectual and powerful 
 men west of the Alleghanies? Is it that 
 real race power is drawn from the hearts 
 of the blessed "meek, who shall inherit the 
 earth"? Twice at least we know that the 
 Lord has chosen the sons of carpenters to 
 803
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 die to make men free ; the sons of Joseph of 
 Nazareth and Thomas Lincoln. 
 
 The few days before the wedding of 
 Thomas and Nancy were so crowded with 
 worldly events that they had not a moment 
 for love s communion, and the maid kept the 
 man s head in such a whirl that he was more 
 stupid and awkward than usual. He fin 
 ished all necessary furniture and on his broad 
 shoulders he transported bundle and box and 
 basket and jug and bucket and kettle 
 through the forest that lay between the 
 Berry home and the new Lincoln cabin, un 
 til he had trampled and kicked in the under 
 growth a well-defined path from door to 
 door. And each journey the Runt, a pa 
 tient little pack mule, trotted behind him, 
 shuffling his big bare feet and singing in a 
 plaintive monotone, in which Tom some 
 times joined him. 
 
 The very day before the wedding, the 
 Runt s employer, not master, stopped in his 
 
 204
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 transporting job long enough to knock up 
 a rude shelter of cedar posts for his em 
 ployee, in which he threw the cedar boughs 
 and a skin blanket for a bed for the little 
 black crow. After he had finished it, and 
 was just ready to pull the door of the cabin 
 to, and go back for another load, Nancy 
 came along the path through the forest, and 
 her rich clear voice was singing Tom s fav 
 orite hymn, the outpouring of the soul of 
 Charles Wesley, which he had made, as a 
 treasure for the ages, when he found him 
 self in danger of death from the actual wa 
 ters of a great storm. 
 
 "Jesus, lover of my soul, 
 Let me to thy bosom fly ; 
 While the nearer waters roll, 
 While the tempest still is high," 
 
 Nancy sang and as she came into the clear 
 ing Thomas Lincoln s rich voice rose and 
 joined hers, in the greatest plea ever writ 
 ten: 
 
 205
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Other refuge have I none, 
 Hangs my helpless soul on thee; 
 
 Cover my defenseless head 
 With the shadow of thy wing." 
 
 "What kept you, Tom?" asked Nancy, as 
 Tom took the basket full of white linen from 
 her head and kissed her red lips in the proc 
 ess. 
 
 "Building a little shack for that worthless 
 Runt," Tom answered, after another kiss. 
 "He d die if he had to sleep more n a hun 
 dred feet away from me, drat him." 
 
 "Say, Tom, you freed Runt, why don t 
 you ask him to make return and free you?" 
 Nancy teased as she walked into the cabin, 
 fanning with a white, ruffed, pink-lined sun- 
 bonnet her cheeks, hot from the long and 
 burdened walk, and also love s imprint. 
 
 "Ain t it purty, honey bird?" Tom asked, 
 as Nancy stood looking around at the little 
 home with shining eyes. 
 
 206
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "It is just a little under heaven, Tom," 
 answered Xancy, crowding close between his 
 arm and his heart. "Nothing to do but put 
 these bleached curtains to the windows you 
 made so nice and big on account of my spin 
 ning and to spread the bed." 
 
 "I think this cabin got sorter located jest 
 inside them pearl gates without our knowing 
 it, Nancy," Tom answered softly as he held 
 her close and looked over her head around 
 the cabin room. 
 
 And the home that Thomas Lincoln built 
 for Nancy Hanks in the township of Eliza- 
 bethtown in the year of our Lord, 1806, 
 would touch the heart of any woman even 
 to the fourth and fifth generation. Tom 
 had arranged with his brother Mordecai to 
 send his skins by a mule-packer, and before 
 the cabin s huge rough stone fireplace was 
 spread all that remained of the big bear Tom 
 had killed in Lincoln Settlement, whose fat 
 Nancy had expended on his head during her 
 207
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 ninth winter. It was a noble skin. Oth 
 ers of deer and wild cat and coon lay about, 
 and over the foot of the rail bed was thrown 
 a blanket of the finest moleskins, which Tom 
 had made in long, lonely winter nights like 
 a woman makes a patchwork quilt. 
 
 "I always intended it to cover you, honey 
 bird, but I did n t think that I would 
 Nancy interrupted him by use of blush and 
 kiss. 
 
 "With the bright pots and dishes and my 
 wheel and loom, and my herbs and things 
 hanging from the rafters, and the twig 
 broom and the candle box full, and my rock 
 ing chair she was saying when Tom in 
 terrupted her. 
 
 "With Aunt Nancy s big Bible and your 
 Pilgrim s Progress on the table, with two 
 dips for lighting, I tell you, Nancy, it it 
 is jest a home, a thing I ain t never had be 
 fore." 
 
 "You 11 never be lonely again," Nancy 
 
 208
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 promised, as she noted the sadness of a life s 
 longing that lay back of the day s joy. 
 
 "Never, with you," Tom assented. 
 
 "And here s the marriage bond you and 
 Uncle Berry have got to sign, and leave in 
 the court house for a record, that they ain t 
 no reason why we should n t marry," said 
 Nancy, as she took a paper from her pocket. 
 
 "They ain t no reason in this world why I 
 should n t marry you, Nancy, except my un- 
 worthiness," Tom said thoughtfully. 
 
 "There s no reason in this world or under 
 heaven why I should n t marry you, Tom," 
 Nancy gave true and honest answer as she 
 looked him full in the face. "Because I Ve 
 worked around amongst the men, folks have 
 backbit me, Tom, but I m honest." 
 
 "I know it, Nancy," answered Tom, with 
 the confidence shining in his face which a 
 good man always feels when he puts the 
 fate of himself and his posterity in the hands 
 of a woman. "Read me this here bond." 
 
 209
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Thereupon Nancy Hanks, who could 
 read, read to Thomas Lincoln, who could not 
 read, the marriage bond which with their 
 licence of marriage is spread upon the rec 
 ords for all men to see, even unto this day. 
 
 Know all men, by these presents, that we, Thomas 
 Lincoln and Richard Berry, are held and firmly bound 
 unto his Excellency, the Governor of Kentucky, in 
 the just and full sum of Fifty Pounds, current money, 
 to the payment of which well and truly, to be made to 
 the said ourselves, our heirs, etc., jointly and sever 
 ally, firmly by these presents, sealed with our seals 
 and dated this 10th day of June, 1806. The condi 
 tion of the above obligation is such that, whereas there 
 is marriage shortly intended between the above bound 
 Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, for which a li 
 cense has been issued: now if there be no lawful cause 
 to obstruct the said marriage, then this obligation to 
 be void, or else to remain in full force and virtue of 
 law. 
 
 THOMAS LINCOLN (SEAL) 
 RICHARD BERRY (SEAL) 
 WITNESS: John H. Parrott, Guardian. 
 
 "Shoo, all that fuss and fine words and 
 money put up just to sorter hold us to hav- 
 
 210
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 ing a right to marry, when the Lord gave us 
 to each other nigh fifteen years ago, you 
 five and me ten years," said Tom with a 
 chuckle. "How am I going to sign it any 
 way, when I can t write my name?" 
 
 "You can just make your mark, Tom, and 
 I 11 make mine on the licence, so as not to 
 shame you, because you 11 be reading and 
 writing before snow flies, with me to teach 
 you," answered Nancy, with ambition for 
 Tom blazing in her purple eyes. 
 
 "Maybe," answered Tom warily. "Did 
 you bring my white shirt?" He thus strove 
 to substitute one ambition for another in 
 Nancy s breast, and succeeded for the time 
 being, though before the predicted time 
 Nancy had taught him to scrawl T. Lincoln. 
 
 "I washed it and ironed it myself, Tom," 
 answered Nancy eagerly. "And, oh, Tom, 
 you know how to fix yourself good ; will you 
 do it for the wedding tomorrow?" 
 
 "Nancy, I give you my word of honor
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 I 11 do all the things you did to me the time 
 I first wore that shirt and some more too. 
 If you don t trust me I 11 come along over 
 to Uncle Berry s, and let you polish me off. 
 I want to do you credit, honey bird, I do, 
 shure." Tom s face was very wistful as he 
 looked at lovely Nancy, standing in the 
 doorway. 
 
 "You and me will do each other credit, 
 Tom," Nancy answered, a flare of ambition 
 in her purple eyes and the gift of prophecy 
 descending upon her for the moment. 
 
 The twelfth day of June, eighteen hun 
 dred and six, dawned in Elizabethtown in 
 the Commonwealth of Kentucky, clear and 
 warm, with fragrant breezes loitering over 
 the tree tops in the forest and shaking down 
 petals of the wild rose in the undergrowth 
 and of English roses on the threshold of the 
 homes in the busy little town. Soft white 
 clouds, that looked like the tips of the wings 
 of hiding attendant angels floating about in 
 
 212
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 the blue waiting to descend as guests at the 
 wedding of Nancy Hanks and Thomas 
 Lincoln, rose on the horizon. 
 
 Members of the Berry and Sparrow house 
 holds swarmed in and about and around, 
 getting all in readiness for the big "wedding 
 infair" to be held out in the edge of the clear 
 ing at Old Rock Spring, to which well nigh 
 the entire country-side had been invited. 
 Long before the dawn of the wedding day, 
 Uncle Berry was up and seeing that the car 
 cases of a young beef, a lamb, two shoats, 
 and numerous wild fowl were roasting over 
 the barbecue pits which he had had dug the 
 day before, and in which Runt and Xed 
 Berry had been burning hickory logs down 
 into beds of coals all night. He mixed, him 
 self, the huge black pot of herbs and butter 
 and vinegar with which the baking meat 
 was basted, and sniffed often and carefully 
 during the day, to be sure that the roasting 
 was being done slowly but surely, which 
 
 213
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 would result in a crackling brown crust with 
 not an inch of burnt skin to mar the perfect 
 taste. 
 
 Aunt Lucy and Aunt Lizzie and their 
 women friends worked around corn pone and 
 pound cake to cup custards, and cold slaw 
 and back again, until the huge flat rock, on 
 which was spread the thickest Berry home 
 spun damask, was in danger of tilting with 
 its burden of food. The gentle young ma 
 tron, Sarah Mitchell Thompson, who had 
 come twenty miles with a new-born baby to 
 the wedding of her best beloved cousin, and 
 pert little Nancy Sparrow Friend worked in 
 Nancy Hanks little dormer loft bedroom, 
 smoothing out the fine white homespun wed 
 ding dress and packing a few of her things 
 in a bundle, to be carried to the cabin out 
 in the clearing at the last minute. And 
 among them Nancy walked, drinking in their 
 kindness and affection, as a flower drinks in 
 the sun and the dew, but she walked alone. 
 
 214
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Thomas Lincoln had taken to his beloved 
 woods in an agony of embarrassment and 
 awe. Tom was not accustomed to be the 
 center of interest. 
 
 "I bet Tom have gone clean back to Lin 
 coln Settlement, and if you say so, Nancy, 
 I 11 get on a mule and drag him back for 
 you/ Uncle Tom Sparrow teased, as he 
 lifted a keg of elderberry wine, of Nancy s 
 own brew, out of the cool cellar and carried 
 it over to set in the cooler drip of Old Rock 
 Spring. 
 
 "Nobody has to rope in a bridegroom for 
 Miss Nancy," Giles Claibourne said, as he 
 looked wistfully at Nancy and then at pretty 
 Hannah Lytsey with whom Nancy, with 
 practical cunning, had set him to selecting 
 smooth rose-colored chips of cedar to be used 
 as plates for the feast, from a pile Tom had 
 cut the day before at the woodshed. 
 
 "Tom will be here," Nancy answered, with 
 a soft laugh in her throat and in her eyes. 
 
 215
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 She knew so well what Tom was undergo 
 ing, but she dared not go to him and leave 
 the guests. 
 
 The family and the near of kin and friends 
 who had been helping prepare the "infair," 
 were just about done with their task, and 
 the sun had sunk almost to the treetops, from 
 which height he grants to the earth the 
 witching hour, when Elder Head arrived and 
 gave the signal for the wedding array. The 
 men washed up at the pump in the back 
 yard and assumed their decorous Sunday 
 coats, of either broadcloth or homespun, 
 while the women took off the aprons that 
 had shielded their festive dimity, shook out 
 their ruffles, smoothed water-waved and 
 banded hair, and began to ask if the bride 
 needed assistance in her toilet. 
 
 It was the custom in the pioneer life to 
 have the actual wedding ceremony per 
 formed with only the family and next of kin 
 and friends as witnesses, just before the 
 
 216
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 waves of the infair were scheduled to break 
 over the then already married pair. There 
 were not more than two dozen well-beloved 
 "folks" in the long, low-roofed Berry living- 
 room to witness the marriage ceremony of 
 Nancy Hanks and Thomas Lincoln, and 
 their eyes were dim as Nancy came into the 
 room in her soft white gown, with a rose in 
 her red-gold hair, seeming somehow to their 
 tenderness as the woman incarnate. She 
 walked over to the fireplace, before which 
 sat Elder Head back of a table, on which lay 
 the large Bible sweet, dead Nancy Shipley 
 had brought with her as she followed big 
 Joseph Hanks into the Wilderness, and her 
 self lighted from the flint box two tall can 
 dles of her own dipping, and with her own 
 steady hand opened the Book at the verses 
 she wanted read to begin her marriage cere 
 mony : 
 
 "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a 
 seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as 
 217
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 death many waters cannot quench love, 
 neither can the floods drown it- 
 Then she turned, and with the love light 
 of the ages on her face, held out her hand 
 to Tom, who had been standing in the door 
 way watching her. He came straight to 
 her with his fine head held high, and the 
 freedom of a woods animal in his lithe stride. 
 Then, with his solemn eyes sunk deep in 
 hers, he stood before Elder Head and made 
 his marriage vow: 
 
 "I, Thomas, take thee Nancy, to have and 
 to hold, until death us do part." 
 
 And Nancy answered him with her eyes 
 and with her lips : 
 
 "I, Nancy, take thee Thomas, to keep to, 
 only as long as we both do live." 
 
 Both vows were kept and the result was 
 justified. 
 
 The "infair," which followed immediately, 
 at which the whole countryside was present, 
 was such a notable occasion that Daniel 
 
 218
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Bishop, then twenty, when nearing a hun 
 dred years of age, compared most unfavor 
 ably all the like functions he had attended in 
 the eighty years that passed from that date, 
 with "the infair at Nancy and Tom Lin 
 coln s wedding." 
 
 After the feast had been consumed, the 
 songs all sung, the toasts drunk in the elder 
 berry wine, the dancing all over, and the fat 
 pine torches flared down into ashes, Nancy 
 tore herself from loving embraces and went 
 out into the forest with her husband, along 
 the path he had worn from her old home to 
 her new. In his hand he carried her nup 
 tial bundle, and under her arm was sweet, 
 dead Nancy s Book of Books. Far before 
 them flitted the shadow of faithful Runt. 
 
 When they had reached the door of their 
 humble home, and Tom had drawn Nancy 
 across the threshold and into his arms, a 
 star rose in the East and shone down over 
 the sacred veil of hovering, purple darkness. 
 
 219
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE first two and a half years of the 
 married life of Tom and Nancy Lin 
 coln passed by in happy, busy, contented 
 pioneer life that kept through the passing 
 seasons the decided flavor of the honeymoon. 
 Thomas Lincoln had been too long without 
 the tenderness of a woman s love to be easily 
 satisfied, and he would hurry home from his 
 carpentering through the woods to the little 
 cabin in the clearing, with all the eagerness 
 of a lover, even run the last few paces to 
 clasp Nancy in rough arms, as she stood 
 dimpling at the door or the edge of the wood 
 waiting for him. 
 
 "What you got for supper, honey bird?" 
 he would ask after his heart hunger had 
 been satisfied. 
 
 220
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "Roast squirrel, corn pone and poke- 
 greens," she would be likely to answer, and 
 very soon thereafter prove her statement by 
 setting the steaming food before the hungry 
 man, who never failed to go to the cedar 
 bucket and earthern pan at the back door 
 to wash his hands and face, after Nancy had 
 reminded him to do so a few times when they 
 were first married. "What have you been 
 doing today?" she w r ould ask, as she sat op 
 posite to him doing her full trencher duty. 
 
 "I was putting the roof to the new rooms 
 Eph Beckett is building to the Elizabeth- 
 town Tavern. And say, Nancy, me and 
 him had one good ruckus over this here 
 law that if a slave gits away, his master kin 
 go git him. Eph, he held that a nigger is 
 property like a hawg or a horse that he paid 
 money for, and he had a right to go git him. 
 I held that a man had no right to own an 
 other man, even if black, in the first place, 
 much less hound him down. We had it up 
 
 221
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 and down and Eph he got hot under his col 
 lar. I did n t have no collar on, but I shut 
 him up, after a considerable crowd had gath 
 ered, by asking him if it is right to hold 
 slaves, why did Mister President Jefferson 
 make a law that no more be brought from 
 Africa after next year. Old Eph would 
 die by that Tom Jefferson, and so he shet 
 up." 
 
 "Mr. Beckett is old, Tom, and I would n t 
 argufy with him tomorrow," Nancy advised, 
 as she helped Tom to the squirrel rump and 
 some more of the pone. 
 
 "I won t have the chanct to fer he told me 
 he could git along without me," Tom an 
 swered with a baffled look coming into his 
 eyes. "A man oughter have the right to his 
 say and his work separate. I hold against 
 slavery strong, and Eph holds for it, but 
 that don t hurt the way I shingle his roof. 
 I won t have no man put a muzzle on me 
 just because he pays me money."
 
 ALAl-lllA. 
 
 "No, don t you never let any man make 
 a slave of your speech, Tom," Nancy agreed 
 with a flame rising in her eyes. 
 
 "But if it keeps up against my work we 
 might git hungry poor," Tom said slowly, 
 with anxiety drawing lines on his rugged 
 face. 
 
 "Well, just declare for freedom when 
 asked and trust the rest to the Lord, who 
 made us all free," Xancy advised with high 
 headed courage, as she began the simple op 
 eration of clearing the table and putting a 
 bountiful dinner for the freedman Runt, who 
 was sitting on his heels at the front of his 
 snug shelter waiting for it. 
 
 "Oh, I reckon Eph will come around when 
 he wants a good story tolt him," Tom said, as 
 Xancy filled his pipe, lit it by expertly pick 
 ing up a coal from the embers of the sup 
 per fire, drew it once herself and handed it 
 to him with a kiss and a stroke of the rough 
 black hair. "Hurry up, honey bird, and 
 
 223
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 come read me a new story on ten the good 
 Book to coax him with." 
 
 Thomas Lincoln had always been a good 
 story teller in his dry quiet way, to the hun 
 ters and men around Lincoln Creek, but, 
 since his residence in Elizabethtown, the gift 
 had been greatly developed. Many of the 
 backwoodsmen he worked with could not 
 read and nothing delighted Tom or them 
 more than to have a story conference at noon 
 time or on a Saturday night, when they 
 brought their wives and daughters in to 
 trade with the merchants around the Square, 
 while they waited to "tote" home the pur 
 chases. Tom s slow mind was very reten 
 tive and the "^sop s Fables" and "Pil 
 grim s Progress" were veritable gold mines 
 to him and through him to the other work 
 ing men, as well as all of the stories of the 
 Bible. No matter how tired he was, after 
 one of Nancy s good suppers, he would al 
 ways light two candles, lay the books on the 
 
 224
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 corner of the table, pull Nancy s rocking 
 chair up, sprawl himself on a bench close to 
 her so his arm could find her at a second s 
 notice and give himself up to the enchant 
 ments her rich voice could extract from the 
 written page of the old books. The wit of 
 the Fables and the Progress of Faithful 
 always came first, and then Nancy would 
 pause a moment, while Tom drew closer and 
 put his rough head on her soft shoulder, as 
 she opened the Book with reverent fingers 
 and began to read and re-read the stories 
 that dead Nancy Hanks had read to the two 
 children from the Book she had brought on 
 a mule-pack from Virginia in place of food 
 for herself, knowing that she must thus 
 bring the bread of life with her into the Wil 
 derness. 
 
 "I will bring you out from under the 
 burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you 
 of their bondage," was the crux of the story 
 he still loved best and he would invariably 
 
 225
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 raise his head with the fire of the zealot com 
 ing into his eyes and ask: 
 
 "The Lord meant folks to be free, Nancy, 
 didn t He?" 
 
 "Yes, Tom, He did, and some day they all 
 will be free!" 
 
 "Let s put it in our prayers, Nancy," 
 Tom would answer, when he knelt beside 
 Nancy with his head bowed against hers as 
 they said prayers every night before blow 
 ing out the candle. 
 
 From the simple faith and communion of 
 these two pioneers came the force that freed 
 hundreds and thousands of black human be 
 ings with hearts and souls. 
 
 Yes, the days and weeks and months flew 
 by for Nancy Hanks Lincoln as she worked 
 and sang in her cabin on the edge of the 
 forest. The "one heifer yearling called 
 Piedy," which her father had given to Nancy 
 in his will, had two descendants in the shack 
 outside the cabin and many pounds of gilt- 
 
 226
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 edged butter did Nancy take or send intc 
 Elizabethtown by Thomas, along with beau 
 tiful fancy woven lengths of cloth, that were 
 eagerly sought by the gentlemen of the town 
 for vests, to be exchanged for gilt-edged coin. 
 She also exchanged packages of herbs, 
 strings of pepper and piggins of maple 
 sugar, that she boiled whenever the sap ran, 
 for banknotes and added them to the score 
 she and Tom were using to make payments 
 on a tract of land over on the Big South 
 Fork of Noland Creek. 
 
 For some time after her wedding Nancy 
 would mount Baldy, the steady nag given to 
 her and Tom by Brother Jo Hanks, a de 
 scendant also from the Baldy of their father s 
 will, behind Tom and take her "truck" in 
 for trading herself, which she conducted with 
 her old skill and joy among her former cus 
 tomers. Then for awhile she had to give 
 that up for the business of producing small 
 Nancy, who came in the spring following
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 her marriage. A baby is an effectual hob 
 ble for any woman, and after her arrival 
 Nancy could be found at all times in her 
 home, singing and working, nursing the baby 
 and making happiness for Tom when he 
 came home. 
 
 But if Nancy could not go to the world, 
 some of her world came to her. On the long 
 summer evenings Uncle Berry would ride 
 out, sometimes with Aunt Berry on the pil 
 lion behind him, Jo Hanks would come 
 swinging on his long legs through the forest, 
 Mordecai would ride up and hitch to a tree 
 on the edge of the clearing, and with him 
 would come Nancy Sparrow and Charlie, 
 or very often Giles Claibourne, who brought 
 behind him blushing Hannah Lystie, whom 
 Nancy had urged upon him for the cherish 
 ing of Gilly and his small brothers and sis 
 ters. 
 
 The whole party would sit out under the 
 trees and great were the political discus- 
 
 228
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 sions waged. At that date the separate 
 States were still ratifying the Constitution, 
 Hamilton s banking policies were always un 
 der fire, and the Louisiana Purchase was a 
 bitterly contested question. On one mem 
 orable evening Christopher Graham met 
 Felix Grundy in front of the home of Nancy 
 Hanks and Thomas Lincoln and "the fur 
 flew." At all times the absorbing topic in 
 the Southwest was the question of slavery, 
 and these two slave holders met and did bat 
 tle with Thomas Lincoln on his own ground. 
 Elder Head was present at that famous dis 
 cussion and he firmly "held with Tom and 
 Nancy." 
 
 And if Thomas Lincoln spoke out in no 
 uncertain terms, Nancy had her say on the 
 subject, and her way was to the point and 
 prophetic. 
 
 "The Lord will take em away from you 
 men who buy em. They are His people." 
 
 "The Lord made the man who invented 
 
 229
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 the cotton gin and by so doing intended slav 
 ery, Mrs. Lincoln," Felix Grundy answered, 
 with the argument which kept America in 
 political storms and retarded her growth for 
 half a century. 
 
 "Wait and see," laughed Nancy in per 
 fect faith. 
 
 The winter of 1807-8 was a hard one, but 
 Nancy and the small Nancy kept snug and 
 busy in the cabin, for it was easy enough for 
 Tom to keep the huge chimney piled high 
 with roaring logs, and the larder stocked 
 with venison, bear, turkey and pork. 
 Nancy still sang at her spinning and weav 
 ing, but a shadow of trouble lay at the depth 
 of her violet eyes and she now took her own 
 products to market herself, no matter how 
 intense the cold or how bad the traveling. 
 The merchants simply would not buy from 
 Thomas Lincoln, and the fact was a most in 
 tense humiliation to Nancy. 
 
 "Why would n t you buy that bolt of but- 
 
 230
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 ternut from Tom when he offered it to you 
 last week, Giles?" she asked Mr. Claibourne, 
 with a simple directness as he counted out a 
 good price for the cloth into her hand. 
 
 "A week s aging don t make cloth of a 
 finer weave," she added. 
 
 "I was so confused after he got through 
 a lot of abolition talk at me right in front of 
 two of my niggers, that I thought I did n t 
 need it," answered Giles with kind indirect 
 ness in stating his case. 
 
 "Well, the cloth is abolition wove and you 
 know you can t buy its equal in the coun 
 try," Nancy answered with her head high. 
 "You trade in souls and Tom and me only 
 ask a fair trade in cloth." 
 
 "I 11 buy anything you bring me to sell, 
 Xancy," Mr. Claibourne answered her. 
 
 "You 11 trade with Tom Lincoln or show 
 an empty shelf when the traders ask you 
 for peach-blow cotton or plaid wove vest 
 lengths," she answered as she swept out of 
 
 231
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 the store with scarlet spots high up under 
 her purple eyes. 
 
 Nancy s experience with her friend Mr. 
 Giles Claibourne was repeated from time to 
 time at the other stores, until the fact was 
 driven home into her heart that Thomas Lin 
 coln was under a ban that threatened to 
 throttle both her and his industries. When 
 he went into town the farmers and traders 
 and carpenters and mechanics stood around 
 him and applauded his abolition views, ex 
 pressed in pointed, strong words with argu 
 ment of the Book to support his contentions, 
 for they had no slaves and it was easy to be 
 lieve as he did. However, they did not ex 
 press their views with enough frankness to 
 injure their barter and trade with the rich 
 men of the community, who did own slaves 
 and resented being taken to task for it. 
 
 But if Tom was fiery and inspired when 
 talking in the village, on the street corners, 
 and around store stoves, he was depressed 
 
 232
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 and bewildered and humiliated at home in 
 the little cabin. 
 
 "Looks like standing up for the Lord s 
 right is going to lead u s into being mighty 
 poor, Nancy honey," he said one night as he 
 sat before the roaring fire with his elbows 
 resting on the table and his head in his 
 hands. "In the pride of their vain hearts 
 they won t buy from me and you won t sell 
 to them. What are we going to do?" 
 
 "The good Lord gave us this land and the 
 woods beyond to make a living on and we 11 
 just do without anybody, and let em do 
 without us. Adam and Eve prospered con 
 siderable until they got neighborly with the 
 Devil," Nancy answered with a comfortable 
 laugh. The dual passion of her life flared 
 up in her eyes as she drew his head to her 
 breast. "I don t ask nothing of God but 
 you, and your heart clean for freedom, Tom 
 Lincoln." 
 
 "Me neither, Nancy," he responded as he 
 
 233
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 engulfed her in her strong arms to which 
 men were denying labor. 
 
 But to live apart from and without the 
 world is well nigh an impossibility for pion 
 eers, and also for men with a purpose in 
 their hearts. Thomas Lincoln could not 
 stay in the Wilderness with what he con 
 ceived to be a message in his soul, and he 
 was drawn irresistibly to the town to 
 "preach," and his talking grew more and 
 more effective as it divided Elizabethtown 
 into pro- and anti-slavery groups. During 
 the spring he found that practically all 
 work had been denied him and he was forced 
 to provide for his family from the Wilder 
 ness. And as the days grew warm and the 
 earth loamy, he plowed with Baldy, and 
 hunted and fished and his little family lived 
 well, with only the sense of injustice keep 
 ing them from being content. 
 
 And all the while Runt, the shadow, was 
 also going his own way. He helped Tom 
 
 234
 
 whenever there was need of him, but long 
 days and hours he spent in the woods trap 
 ping and skinning and curing pelts of all 
 kinds. He kept his operations out of 
 Nancy s sight, for he remembered the scene 
 on Lincoln Creek about the poults in their 
 childhood, and she really was not aware that 
 he had built up a very lucrative trade in 
 Elizabethtown with his beautiful skins. 
 
 And the whole of Elizabethtown believed, 
 or pretended to believe, that Thomas Lin 
 coln, the abolitionist, was using the little 
 black man as a kind of fence to dispose of 
 his own productions to avoid their boycott, 
 while he preached as he chose against them. 
 
 It was a cruel, bitter cruel, situation. 
 
 And Nancy had to face it on that early 
 July day, perhaps the 4th, three years after 
 the summer in which she had chosen be 
 tween Thomas Lincoln and Clinton Meri- 
 weather before the eyes of all Elizabethtown. 
 The last payments for the land out at 
 
 235
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 Noland Creek were due, and she felt that 
 she must go into Elizabethtown to pay them 
 at the Elizabethtown Bank, for she could see 
 how Thomas shrank from business with his 
 coldly courteous enemies. She dressed her 
 self in one of her old blue homespuns, which 
 was faded to the color of the heavens, put 
 on her white sunbonnet, mounted Baldy and 
 rode away from the cabin, leaving Tom and 
 wee Nancy in charge. It was summer and 
 she was young and strong and love-mated, 
 and she sang as she rode along under heavy 
 leafed boughs and over daisy-dotted carpets 
 of green. The joy of life was in her strong 
 body, as lissom as it had ever been, only 
 made richer in curves by her easy mater 
 nity, when she slipped from old Baldy, 
 hitched him to a rack and entered the Eliza 
 bethtown Bank, expecting to find kind Mr. 
 Robinson to transact her business for her. 
 
 Instead of her friend, Clinton Meri- 
 weather rose to greet her. Three years out 
 
 236
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 in the world beyond the Alleghanies had not 
 taken her out of his heart and he had come 
 back with a bitter determination to make 
 another effort to get her. Her developed 
 beauty almost made him reel, as she held out 
 her hand to him with a glad, hearty, neigh 
 borly smile of welcome. 
 
 "Howdy, Clint, welcome back to Eliza- 
 bethtown," she said, trying to put as much 
 neighborliness into her voice as possible. 
 
 "Thank you, Nancy," he said as he took 
 her hand in both his and held it for a sec 
 ond between his hot palms before he let it 
 fall. In both their minds was the memory 
 of the similar greeting they had spoken at 
 the moment of his undoing years before. 
 And at the memory of it Xancy blushed, as a 
 woman will, and the blush quickened Clin 
 ton s pulse. 
 
 "What can I do for you?" he asked, 
 grasping at the straw of business to steady 
 himself. 
 
 237
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "I want to make a payment on Tom s and 
 my land at Noland Creek. The notes are 
 here in the bank," Nancy answered in a re 
 lieved voice and with a certain note of pride 
 at thus proving Tom, the husband, a land 
 owner to the discarded but powerful lover. 
 "We could have made all the last payment 
 if the winter had n t been so hard." 
 
 "Still the business in skins has been brisk," 
 Clinton ventured cautiously, looking at her 
 with veiled eyes. He had been told of the 
 dealings of Thomas Lincoln through his 
 negro and wanted to see if she were a party 
 thereto or deceived by her husband; the lat 
 ter he judged to be the case by Nancy s quick 
 answer : 
 
 "Tom never traps, and shot skins don t 
 sell for much. I wish we could finish pay 
 ing for the land this summer, for interest 
 mounts up." 
 
 "Maybe we can arrange some way to 
 make it easier on you. I 11 come out be- 
 
 258
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 fore long and talk to Mr. Lincoln about it," 
 the banker said with all his most gracious 
 tone and manner. "We re just going on 
 being friends, aren t we, Nancy?" 
 
 Clinton Meriweather knew with bitter 
 ness that he was reduced to the old formula 
 of friendship for a desired woman s husband, 
 and he meant to use it for all it contained, 
 for he had convinced himself that Nancy s 
 situation as the wife of the Pariah must be 
 changed. 
 
 "We 11 be mighty glad to have you come, 
 Clint if you want to after you hear we 
 ain t got many friends now, me and Tom," 
 Nancy answered, with quick tears rising to 
 her dark lashes, thus putting herself outside 
 the pale with her husband, though she well 
 knew that the community would not so place 
 her. 
 
 "I know all about it, Nancy, and nothing 
 could keep me from being your friend," 
 Clinton answered her with the tenderness of 
 
 239
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 his voice so controlled that it only meant 
 strength to Nancy s humiliation. "I m 
 coming out Saturday and shoot poults with 
 Lincoln if you 11 fry some for supper. I 
 have n t had any fried turkey for three years, 
 remember, and put on the big pot and the 
 little kettle." 
 
 "Oh, Clint, I 11 be so glad to have you 
 come as a friend to us. Maybe you can 
 help folks to to understand Tom." And 
 in the happiness of having found sympathy, 
 Nancy s tears overflowed as they would 
 never have done in the presence of enmity. 
 She was drying them on the ruffle of her 
 sunbonnet while Clinton was administering 
 a friendly and controlled pat to her shoul 
 der, still heaving with swallowed sobs, when 
 Dame Evelyn Robinson and Jean, now 
 Kyle, entered. 
 
 Poor Nancy! The long winter of soli 
 tude would count as nothing in their eyes 
 
 240
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 against the one brief moment of friendly and 
 sympathetic communion. 
 
 "She is shameless," Dame Robinson said 
 under her breath to her daughter. But 
 Nancy was too innocent and happy and 
 friendly to notice the coldness of their greet 
 ing, which, to tell the truth, would have been 
 colder if they had not felt a direct and 
 watchful gaze leveled on them from the keen 
 eyes of their good friend, the banker, whom 
 they had come in to welcome. 
 
 And as she rode through the purple sum 
 mer twilight, Nancy s heart seemed to throw 
 
 C7 / 
 
 off its burden and she sang as she had never 
 sung before, as she let Baldy amble along 
 at his will. 
 
 "Jesus, lover of my soul " 
 
 her voice chanted out above the tree tops 
 over into the home clearing and reached 
 Thomas Lincoln, as he sat on the cabin steps 
 
 241
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 waiting for her, and immediately he stood 
 up and answered : 
 
 "Let me to thy bosom fly; 
 While the nearer waters roll, 
 And the tempest still is high." 
 
 Then he went to meet her and they finished 
 together : 
 
 "Other refuge have I none. 
 
 All my help from thee I bring: 
 Cover my defenseless head 
 With the shadow of thy wing." 
 
 And as in the twilight Nancy went into 
 the strong tender arms of her husband, her 
 heart, which had been comforted by the 
 thoughts of the friendship offered them in 
 their defenselessness rose in her bosom with 
 hope and gratitude. 
 
 And at that moment she clung to her hus 
 band as she looked at the evening star rising 
 in the east. 
 
 242
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 "It s true, Tom! I pray it s going to be 
 a man," she whispered. 
 
 Her prayer was answered. The child 
 was a man among men and was called Abra 
 ham Lincoln, 
 
 243
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 summer before her son s birth was 
 a busy, hard one for Nancy, though 
 true to his word, Banker Meriweather 
 fended the "tempest" from her. The peo 
 ple of Elizabethtown really loved Nancy 
 Lincoln and it was easy for a few words here 
 and there from the banker to restrain them 
 from making any demonstration of active 
 dislike for Thomas, her husband, especially 
 as her condition kept him near her and out 
 of actively angry arguments most of the 
 time. But all over the country the slavery 
 question was burning with a greater heat, 
 and the Runt, in his anomalous position 
 creeping in and out, selling skins that they 
 thought his master sent him to trade, was 
 
 244
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 breath on the smouldering suspicion and dis 
 like they had for Thomas Lincoln. They 
 bided their time, but they got him at last. 
 
 And her husband s frequent spells of de 
 pression only made Nancy more courageous 
 as she worked through the late summer and 
 fall preparing for the long winter, which 
 was going to be doubly hard for her. Since 
 Tom could not get work they had no money 
 to buy wool or cotton for her spinning, and 
 she had only the fleece to weave one tiny little 
 garment to keep her future President warm, 
 but she contrived a few fine cotton slips from 
 her own things to put under his fleece. Also 
 she depended upon wrapping him in the 
 moleskin against the bitterest cold. 
 
 "I m mighty glad you can be a little 
 happy, honey bird," Thomas said with one 
 of his rare sad smiles, as he stood hanging 
 her bunches of sage and sassafras and tansy 
 and cammomile with strings of red peppers, 
 to the huge hewn rafters that ran across the 
 
 245
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 cabin and supported the floor of the loft, 
 which was reached by a ladder. 
 
 And Nancy answered him with the Ma 
 donna s words from the Book: 
 
 "My soul doth magnify the Lord, 
 
 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Saviour." 
 
 "That s the way I feel, Thomas, and I know 
 I am carrying a blessed burden for you and 
 me." 
 
 "There never was a woman like you in 
 the world before, Nancy," Thomas said, as 
 he looked down from his ladder on her with 
 great reverence. 
 
 After the slowly dying blaze of autumn 
 and the purple flicker of Indian summer 
 had burned out, winter flung its blankets 
 of snow over the little cabin, and sleet rained 
 down upon it and the winds tore at it, but 
 failed to shake it. Tom and the Runt kept 
 the huge logs piled high and blazing, and by 
 
 246
 
 their light Nancy read and dreamed, as she 
 did the few tasks concerned with the cook 
 ing of the food for her family. When the 
 weather was good, Tom went into town for 
 the necessities, which were few, for they had 
 provisioned themselves well against the win 
 ter need, and what they lacked in dried meat 
 his gun supplied. Almost his only pur 
 chases were powder for his horn and coffee 
 and tea for Nancy s pot. When the 
 weather would allow it, Nancy Friend and 
 Aunt Lucy Berry came out to see Nancy, 
 but their visits were few and far between, on 
 account of the cold. 
 
 Then just before the dawn of Sunday, 
 February 12th, 1809, Nancy s hour came 
 upon her and her son, Abraham Lincoln, 
 opened his big gray eyes to the first clear 
 sunrise in two weeks. 
 
 "Shoo, Nancy, I never did see such a child, 
 he s as big as a yearling now," Thomas, the 
 father, said after he had performed the sim- 
 
 247
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 pie birth rights for his son under Nancy s 
 directions, for neither of them had thought of 
 calling for assistance through the dark cold 
 forest. 
 
 "He s a-looking right into my heart, 
 Tom," Nancy said, as she watched a pair of 
 big gray eyes open over the rim of her white 
 breast, and seem to look up straight into hers 
 for a second before they flickered and shut. 
 
 "He 11 never look into a purtier sight," 
 Tom answered, as he kissed Nancy gently 
 and drew the moleskin around mother and 
 son, both of whom were immediately asleep 
 after the trying ordeal of introduction to 
 each other. 
 
 With the advent of young Abraham Lin 
 coln into the world the grim weather broke, 
 and by the time he was a month old, spring 
 had come with her myriads of life buddings. 
 Nancy was again on her feet more full of 
 life and strength than she had ever been, 
 and also bursting with pride over the man- 
 
 248
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 child, who was such a wonder of size that 
 many of her friends journeyed out just to 
 behold him. 
 
 "Lordy, Nancy, this child will be Gov 
 ernor or git hung," the old stage driver 
 Hardstay declared, as he stopped his stage 
 and walked a half mile across to pay his re 
 spects. "The set of that jaw is to rule or 
 ruin." Years after Abraham Lincoln lay 
 in his grave, old Hardstay, nearing the cen 
 tury mark, would take pride in repeating his 
 prophecy. 
 
 And as the building season opened, 
 Thomas Lincoln drove himself into Eliza- 
 bethtown in fruitless quests for work. 
 Builders never had a job for him, and while 
 the men would sit at dinner time and talk 
 with him and listen to him, even question 
 him on his favorite political theme, he failed 
 to find an invitation to "lend a hand." And 
 this fact ate into his very vitals and made 
 him come home in a state of utter despond- 
 
 249
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 ency and bitterness, a state which Nancy 
 never failed to lighten for him with a stead 
 fast reiteration of the principles of inherent 
 freedom for mankind, which were making 
 him an outcast. 
 
 "It s not wrong to preach the Lord s 
 right, Tom," she always affirmed. 
 
 It was Nancy s own faith and courage and 
 love which supported her during it all, but 
 she scarcely realized how much she depended 
 upon the friendship and sympathy of Clin 
 ton Meriweather as he went back and forth 
 along the bridle path to Elizabethtown, al 
 ways shooting with Tom and bringing in the 
 game for her to cook and eat with them. 
 
 He never talked politics with Tom but 
 they swapped "^Esop s Fables" for worldly 
 tales of the great cities of New York and 
 Boston and Philadelphia, which Clinton 
 knew so well. Tom never tired of hearing 
 stories of the sea and the city which Clinton 
 had collected, and Nancy was just as eager 
 
 250
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 for them as Tom. She would sit with wee 
 Nancy at her knee and Abraham on her 
 breast, and listen with her big purple eyes 
 eagerly flaring into his, until Meriweather 
 would be obliged to go home through the 
 forest with a flame that was dangerous, burn 
 ing in his breast. He was ready for any 
 thing to get her and he thought he saw hope 
 in what he considered Tom s evident unbal 
 ance of life and character. 
 
 "She s in a dream about the poor fool 
 and something must wake her," he muttered 
 to himself one night as he went through the 
 woods, after looking back to see Nancy with 
 Tom behind her holding a candle high over 
 her head to light him to the opening of the 
 path. "I must save her. I must." 
 
 And in truth the strain upon Nancy was 
 becoming very bitter. Her people came 
 less frequently to see her, because one by 
 one they had acquired the necessary slaves 
 to carry on their business, and they did n t 
 
 251
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 care to hear Tom s opinion of the matter. 
 She had both the children to care for and 
 Tom was now most of the time away in 
 Elizabethtown. talking around the Square 
 and the stores and making trouble for him 
 self with each discussion, which trouble he 
 brought home for Xancy at night. 
 
 Naturally, when Clinton Meriweather 
 came whistling through the woods, it seemed 
 to Xancy that she could slip by means of his 
 stories and jokes into another world for a 
 moment s ease from her heavy burdens. 
 
 "Tell me about ships, Clint, it rests me." 
 she said to him one day, when he caught her 
 at the ironing board, weary and hot. 
 
 And the banker believed that the time he 
 bided had almost come. 
 
 Then the blow from which Thomas Lin 
 coln never recovered his spirit fell upon 
 him. and Xancv was there to see it admin- 
 
 
 
 istered, 
 
 It was upon the occasion of her first visit 
 
 252
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 to Elizabethtown after the birth of her son. 
 who was about six weeks old, and she had 
 dressed herself and him with the greatest 
 care in the best they possessed, which was 
 some of her own patched girlhood finery for 
 them both. All the afternoon she went from 
 one store to another doing her little trading 
 directly, with no apologies offered. Also 
 she offered no goods for sale, but she did ex 
 hibit the baby with the greatest pride to her 
 old friends, who were secretly suffering at 
 what they thought was her unhappy condi 
 tion. 
 
 After she had collected her pathetically 
 small bundles of tea and coffee, she crossed 
 the Square to the front of the Court House, 
 where a huge stump of white poplar had 
 been left in the original clearing, to be used 
 for the political speaking. Her horse was 
 hitched near and she wanted to deposit her 
 packages and look in the crowd she saw- 
 around the stump, for Tom, meaning to 
 
 253
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 gently draw him away from arguments that 
 would hurt him. Just as she reached the 
 outskirts of the crowd, Felix Grundy, the 
 Tennessean, and old friend of the Berrys 
 and Hankses and Lincolns, stepped on the 
 stump and began to address the crowd. 
 The year before, the act which prohibited the 
 bringing of slaves into America had been 
 put in operation, and feeling ran high in 
 the Southern states among the Southern 
 planters, who felt they must have the blacks 
 to work their cotton and tobacco, trading in 
 which the Northerners were making large 
 fortunes. A large party of young Southern 
 orators had risen to oppose the Jeffersonians 
 and urge the repealing of the exclusion 
 act under the threat of secession. Of these 
 speakers, Grundy of Tennessee was well 
 nigh as fiery as Clay of Kentucky, and 
 wherever he orated feeling ran high. 
 
 As Nancy Hanks Lincoln, with six- 
 weeks-old Abraham curled against her 
 
 254
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 breast, stood on the outskirts of the crowd, 
 which was composed of most of the leading 
 gentry of Elizabethtown, who always en 
 thusiastically rallied around the handsome, 
 rich and cultured Grundy, and a large 
 sprinkling of the tradesmen and mechanics 
 and farmers and workmen, she failed to see 
 Tom standing just to one side of the speaker, 
 leaning against a poplar tree, whittling a 
 stick, but with fire in his eyes. The first 
 she knew of his presence was when his big 
 voice cut into one of Grundy s most impres 
 sive flights on the inviolable rights of prop 
 erty. 
 
 "Right here, Mister Grundy, please," 
 Tom s voice commanded with such authority 
 that even the silver-tongued Grundy paused 
 and looked at his interrupter with attention. 
 "Granted that nobody has a right to take 
 niggers away from them that owns them like 
 horses, was it right for em to be owned in 
 the first place? Did the Lord ever in- 
 
 255
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 tend But that was as far as the aboli 
 tionist was allowed to get. The "tempest" 
 of dislike was loosed on him and swept over 
 the head of Nancy and Abraham as it en 
 gulfed him. 
 
 Gideon Robinson rose on a small stump 
 near at hand and his sharp voice whipped 
 his words through the air : 
 
 "That will do, Lincoln. No man who 
 preaches abolition until we refuse to trade 
 with him, and then sends his slave sneaking 
 in to trade for him has a voice in this dis 
 cussion. We want nothing more from you." 
 
 Tom s head went up like that of a war 
 horse, but Nancy shrank as if from a blow, as 
 she clutched Abraham closer to her breast. 
 
 "Tain t so," she cried, answering the dual 
 charge with a woman s wail of agony. 
 
 "If you mean that nigger Runt, I freed 
 him before I was fifteen years old," Tom 
 said with his dark eyes fixed on Robin 
 son s face. "I pay him for what he does 
 
 256
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 for me and if he trades, he trades for him 
 self, free just the same as you or me. If 
 anybody don t know it, I hereby declare him 
 a free man." 
 
 Tom s defiance was the first act of aboli 
 tion in Elizabethtown and it brought its 
 storm. The crowd was an angry mob, from 
 which Xancy found herself drawn with au 
 thoritative hands, lifted up on her horse and 
 led out of the Square. Her head was bent 
 over that of her swaddled son and she was 
 weeping so bitterly that she did not realize 
 who was leading her horse, until she was well 
 into the clearing. Then she looked up to see 
 Clinton Meriweather s pained eyes, full of 
 sympathy, upon her. He was riding his 
 roan, which always stood hitched in front of 
 the bank, and he took the bridle path in front 
 of her, leading her horse after him. 
 
 "I 11 get you home, Nancy," was all he 
 said, and silently he led her through the 
 woods to her cabin, silently he lifted her, with 
 
 257
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 her son in her arms, to the ground, and as 
 silently followed her into the sunset dusk of 
 the cabin. 
 
 "Now I suppose you 11 come with me 
 away from the half-wit who can t take care 
 of you. I 11 take you and the children to 
 your aunt s, until we can get rid of him and 
 I can marry you," he said, as he stood in 
 front of the logs smouldering in the fire 
 place. "You ve suffered enough poverty 
 and disgrace with him. Now you shall have 
 what you deserve." As he spoke the will of 
 the handsome, strong man of the world went 
 forth to do battle with that of the homespun, 
 pioneer woman whom he had promised him 
 self he would somehow take and hold. 
 
 "It s the God s truth, Nancy, and you 
 had better go back to your folks," came an 
 interruption before Nancy could make her 
 answer, and Tom Lincoln stood in the door. 
 
 "I got away but they are a-going to come 
 
 258
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 to shiveree me in less than an hour, and I 
 want to go out into the woods and lose myself 
 from people who hunt humans like critters." 
 As he spoke the fire of what the world then 
 called fanaticism, a fanaticism which later 
 involved the whole world, flamed in his eyes 
 and his black hair stood up like the crest of 
 a charger in a holy war. "Freedom is all 
 that s worth living for!" 
 
 Standing with Abraham on her breast, 
 Xancy Hanks Lincoln made her choice be 
 tween the two men, one offering all that the 
 world could give her and the other nothing, 
 seemingly. 
 
 "I m sorry, Clint, but I hold with Tom, 
 and good-by," she said with a smile that 
 shone round and across her son s head. 
 
 Then she turned from him to her husband 
 and said: "Pack little Nancy and as much 
 as you can on the horse, and drive the stock 
 along after me, Tom. I m going to take 
 
 259
 
 THE MATRIX 
 
 myself and you and our children back into 
 the woods on Noland Creek. The Lord 
 will guide us to freedom." 
 
 And out into the Wilderness she went with 
 Abraham. Tom followed. 
 
 THE END 
 
 260
 
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