He sat upright in bed. Speak to Bente. . . . No. . . One would surely have heard something - some kind of cry or alarm if there was anything wrong. He began slowly and irresolutely to put on his clothes. It was a respite for the moment. "What is the matter, Borvig?" asked his wife. All the doctor's enery returned suddenly he jumped up and rushed into the yellow room. "Great heavens! what a strange light through the doorthe wall is quite red!" cried Mrs. Borvig; she was up in a moment and struck a match to light the candle. The doctor stood awhile at the window before he spoke. "It really seems as if there is some kind of a fire down there," he uttered hoarsely. "Perhaps only a chimney on fire You see there isn't much light there now - hardly anything." Suddenly the fire broke out again in a thick whirling smoke mixed with flames, so that the river with the floating ice, and the sheriff's farm, could be seen quite clearly. The doctor opened his mouth as if to shriek, but closed it again. He drew his breath with difficulty. "We must get dressed, Bente- and try and get down there we must send a horse and boy." "Heaven preserve us, Borvig, do you see?" shouted his wife. The doctor stood speechless, seized with an undefined fear. A yellowish glare was now thrown over the fields with the melting snow. The tenants belonging to the neighboring farms came running out of their houses, and people and horses were seen on the road coming from all directions. Suddenly the fire seemed to be extinguished, the whirling cloud of smoke became black as pitch, and the landscape was buried in darkness if only the moon. "They have got the fire under-they have got it under!" gasped the doctor, seized by a sudden wild hope. "They have got out the engine at the mill and are working it. . . . They will master it, you 'll see. . . . There are people enough. . . . But suddenly the flames shot up again-higher and higher in the air like so many fiery tongues against the dark sky, with a shower of sparks from the burning sawdust and shavings. The doctor breathed quickly, as if the air was too hot for him he turned round with a gesture of despair, as if trying to shut out the sight from his eyes. . . The stacks of deals had caught fire. . . . there could be no doubt that they Mrs. Borvig walked despairingly round the bedroom, moaning and groaning. "My God, my God! - from sin to crime. . . .” "Fortunate for Kjel," said the doctor, "that he is not at home to-night. He went up to town by the evening train." "Is that true, Borvig - Borvig?" She clung convulsively to him. "And I, who suspected him!" "Bente be quiet, be quiet, do you hear. Are you going with me or not?... Down at the saw-mill the doctor was rushing about without his coat between and on the top of the stacks of planks directing the extinguishing of the fire, while the fire-engine was kept hard at work, and the hose was being plied in vain upon the sea of fire and flames. His begrimed figure could be seen in the smoke and sparks among the stacks, eager in search of means and ways to stop the conflagration. He was still there when the deals began to crackle and fall together; at last the flames drove him away. And after the attempt had been abandoned at one point, he tried persistently to direct the work of extinguishing into the narrow passages between the stacks till the workmen refused to proceed any further into the suffocating heat, protesting that it was not a question of human life. As the day broke the smoke lay in black, drifting clouds over the river, and the doctor could be seen in torn, scorched clothes at his hopeless work, trying to save a last small corner of the timber-yard. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, sixteenth President of the United States, was born in Hardin County, Ky., Feb. 12, 1809; died by assassination at Washington, April 15, 1865, six weeks after entering upon his second term as President. Lincoln's boyhood was passed amid the hardships and poverty incident to pioneer life. In 1835 the Black Hawk War broke out and young Lincoln led a company of volunteers against the Indians. Two years later he was elected to the Illinois Legislature and remained a member till 1842. In 1836 he obtained a license to practice law and rose rapidly in his profession. In 1846 he was elected to Congress as a Whig. With the passage of the KansasNebraska Bill, in 1854, fresh interest was added to the anti-slavery agitation and Lincoln became a candidate for United States Senator in opposition to Stephen A. Douglas, the acknowledged champion of slavery in Illinois. Douglas was successful, but the ability displayed by Lincoln in the debates of the canvass brought him into national prominence. In February, 1860, Lincoln made a speech on the slavery question at Cooper Institute, New York, which gained him a lasting reputation throughout the country and the world. In 1860 he was elected President of the United States. As chief executive of the nation he opposed the secession of any of the States. On Sept. 22, 1862, he issued a proclamation declaring the freedom on Jan. 1, 1863, of all slaves in the States and parts of States that should then be in rebellion. November 19th of the same year he made his immortal address at the consecration of the battle-field of Gettysburg. On his second inauguration, March 4, 1865, President Lincoln delivered an address which will stand forever as a model of lofty eloquence and sublime morality. On April 3, at the head of the victorious Union army, he entered Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. His last public address was made April 11, 1865. The night of April 14, he fell by an assassin's hand in Ford's Theater, Washington. Among his most famous utterances are the Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861; the Emancipation Proclamation, Jan. 1, 1863; the Gettysburg speech, Nov. 19, 1863; and the second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865. |