a tempest. We generally get a tempest about this time of year, when
winter finally breaks up into spring. Well, I declare! there comes
Johnnie Kongapod, the Kickapoo Indian from Illinois--he and his dogs."

A tall Indian was seen coming toward the smithy, followed by two dogs.
The men watched him as he approached. He was a kind of chief, and had
accepted the teachings of the early missionaries. He used to wander
about among the new settlements, and was very proud of himself and his
own tribe and race. He had an honest heart. He once composed an epitaph
for himself, which was well meant but read oddly, and which Abraham
Lincoln sometimes used to quote in his professional career:

"Here lies poor Johnnie Kongapod,
Have mercy on him, gracious God,
As he would do if he was God,
And you were Johnnie Kongapod."

The Indian sat down on the log sill of the blacksmith's shop, and
watched the gathering cloud as it slowly shut out the sky.

"Storm," said he. "Lay down, Jack; lay down, Jim."

Jack and Jim were his two dogs. They eyed the flaming forge. One of them
seemed tired, and lay down beside his master, but the other made himself
troublesome.

"That reminds me," said Dennis Hanks; and he related a curious story of
a troublesome dog, perhaps the one which in its evolutions became known
as "SYKES'S DOG," though this may be a later New Salem story. It was an
odd and a coarse bit of humor. Lincoln himself is represented as telling
this, or a like story, to General Grant after the Vicksburg campaign,
something as follows:

"'Your enemies were constantly coming to me with their criticisms while
the siege was in progress, and they did not cease their ill opinions
after the city fell. I thought that the time had come to put an end to
this kind of criticism, so one day, when a delegation called to see me
and had spent a half-hour, and tried to show me the great mistake that
you had made in paroling Pemberton's army, I thought I could get rid of
them best by telling the story of Sykes's dog.

"'Have you ever heard the story of Sykes's dog?' I said to the spokesman
of the delegation.

"'No.'

"'Well, I must tell it to you. Sykes had a yellow dog that he set great
store by; but there were a lot of _small boys_ around the village, and
the dog became very unpopular among them. His eye was so keen on his
master's interests that there arose prejudice against him. The boys
counseled how to get rid of him. They fin