ll, Abe went to Gordon's, and his turn come to grind. He hitched the
horse to the pole, and said, as always, 'Get up, you old jade!' I always
say that, so Abe does. He didn't mean any disrespect to the horse, who
always maintained a very respectable-like character up to that day.

"The horse went round and round, round and round, just as steady as
clock-work, until the grist was nearly out, and the sound of the
grindin' was low, when he began to lag, sleepy-like. Abe he run up
behind him, and said, 'Get up, you old jade!' then puckered up his
mouth, so, to say 'Gluck.' 'Tis a word I taught him to use. Every one
has his own horse-talk.

"He waved his stick, and said 'Gl--'

"Was the horse bewildered? He never did such a thing before. In an
instant, like a thunder-clap when the sun was shinin', he h'isted up his
heels and kicked Abraham in the head, and knocked him over on the
ground, and then stopped as though to think on what he had done.

"The mill-hands ran to Abraham. There the boy lay stretched out on the
ground just as though he was dead. They thought he was dead. They got
some water, and worked over him a spell. They could see that he
breathed, but they thought that every breath would be his last.

"'He's done for this world,' said Gordon. 'He'll never come to his
senses again. Thomas Lincoln would be proper sorry.' And so I should
have been had Abraham died. Sometimes I think like it was the Evil One
that possessed that horse. It don't seem to me that he'd 'a' ever ha'
kicked Abe of his own self--right in the head, too. You can see the scar
on him now.

"Well, almost an hour passed, when Abe came to himself--consciousness
they call it--all at once, in an instant. And what do you think was the
first thing he said? Just this--'uk!'

"He finished the word just where he left it when the horse kicked him,
and looked around wild-like, and there was the critter standin' still as
the mill-stun.' Now, where do you think the soul of Abe was between
'Gl--' and 'uk'? I'd like to have ye tell me that."

A long discussion would follow such a question. Abraham Lincoln himself
once discussed the same curious incident with his law-partner Herndon,
and made it a subject of the continuance of mental consciousness after
death.

It was a warm afternoon. A dark cloud hung in the northern sky, and grew
slowly over the arch of serene and sunny blue.

"Goin' to have a storm," said the blacksmith. "Shouldn't wonder if it
were