ling his chair. "But,
sir--"

"Abraham Lincoln," interrupted the Judge, forcibly "I try to speak
plainly, sir. You are to deliver it into Mr. Lincoln's hands. If he is
not in Springfield, find out where he is and follow him up. Your expenses
will be paid by me. The papers are important. Do you understand, sir?"

Stephen did. And he knew better than to argue the matter with Mr.
Whipple. He had read in the Missouri Democrat of this man Lincoln, a
country lawyer who had once been to Congress, and who was even now
disputing the senatorship of his state with the renowned Douglas. In
spite of their complacent amusement, he had won a little admiration from
conservative citizens who did not believe in the efficacy of Judge
Douglas's Squatter Sovereignty. Likewise this Mr. Lincoln, who had once
been a rail-sputter, was uproariously derided by Northern Democrats
because he had challenged Mr. Douglas to seven debates, to be held at
different towns in the state of Illinois. David with his sling and his
smooth round pebble must have had much of the same sympathy and ridicule.

For Mr. Douglas, Senator and Judge, was a national character, mighty in
politics, invulnerable in the armor of his oratory. And he was known far
and wide as the Little Giant. Those whom he did not conquer with his
logic were impressed by his person.

Stephen remembered with a thrill that these debates were going on now.
One, indeed, had been held, and had appeared in fine print in a corner of
the Democrat. Perhaps this Lincoln might not be in; Springfield; perhaps
he, Stephen Brice, might, by chance, hit upon a debate, and see and hear
the tower of the Democracy, the Honorable Stephen A. Douglas.

But it is greatly to be feared that our friend Stephen was bored with his
errand before he arrived at the little wooden station of the Illinois
capital. Standing on the platform after the train pulled out, he summoned
up courage to ask a citizen with no mustache and a beard, which he swept
away when he spat, where was the office of Lincoln & Herndon. The
stranger spat twice, regarded Mr. Brice pityingly, and finally led him in
silence past the picket fence and the New England-looking meeting-house
opposite until they came to the great square on which the State House
squatted. The State House was a building with much pretension to beauty,
built in the classical style, of a yellow stone, with sold white blinds
in the high windows and mighty columns capped at the ge