"Serving papers on somebody?" asked the clerk cheerfully.

So much for thinking I look like a lawyer, thought Verily. "No sir," said Verily. "Just a conversation with a friend of a friend."

"Then that ain't legal business, is it?"

Verily almost laughed. He knew what type of fellow this was right off. The kind who had memorized the rule book and knew his list of duties and took pleasure in refusing to do anything that wasn't on the list.

"You know," said Verily, "it's not. And I've got no business wasting your time. So what I'll do is, I'll remain here in this public space where any citizen of the United States is permitted to be, and I'll greet every person who enters this courthouse and ask them to help me locate this citizen. And when they ask me why I don't just ask the clerk at the desk, I'll tell them that I wouldn't want to waste that busy gentleman's time."

The man's smile got a little frosty. "Are you threatening me?"

"Threatening you with what?" said Verily. "I'm determined to locate a citizen of this fair town for reasons that are between me and him and a mutual friend, doing no harm to him or anyone else. And since this building is at the very center of town-a fine building it is, too, I might add, as good a courthouse as I've seen in any county seat of comparable size in Hio or Wobbish or New England, for that matter-I can think of no likelier place to encounter someone who can help me find Mr. Abraham Lincoln."

There. He'd got the name out. Now to see if the man could resist the temptation to show off what he knew.

He could not. "Old Abe? Well, now, why didn't you say it was Old Abe from the start?"

"Old? The man I'm looking for can't be thirty yet."

"Well, that's him, then. Tall and lanky, ugly as sin but sweet as sugar pie?"

"I've heard rumors about his height," said Verily, "but the rest of your description awaits personal verification."

"Well he'll be in the general store, now that he's out of the store business himself. Or in Hiram's tavern. But you know what? Just go out on the street and listen for laughter, follow the sound of it, and wherever it's coming from, there's Abe Lincoln, cause either he's causing the laughter or doing the laughing himself."

"Why thank you, sir," said Verily. "But now I fear I've taken too much of your time, and not on proper legal business at all, so I'll step on out of here before I get you in some kind of trouble."

"Oh, no trouble," said the clerk. "Any friend of Abe's is a friend of everybody's."

Verily bade him farewell and stepped back out into the afternoon sunshine.

Abe Lincoln sounds for all the world like the town drunk- or a ne'er-do-well, in any case. Failed at a store. No job to do so he can be found in a tavern or a general store. And this is the one I've been sent to find?

Though a drunk or ne'er-do-well would probably not get such a warm description from someone as precise and well ordered as that clerk.

To his surprise, when he stopped two men coming out of a barber shop-sporting that new clean-shaven look that required a man to spend ten cents a day getting his beard removed-and asked them if they knew the current whereabouts of Abraham Lincoln, they both held up a hand to hush him, listened, and sure enough, the sound of a distant gale of laughter could be heard.

"Sounds like he's over at Cheaper's store," said one man.

"Just straight on down the street," said the other, "kitty-corner from here."

So Verily followed the sound of laughter and sure enough, when he walked into the cool darkness of the store's interior, there were a half a dozen men and a couple of ladies, sitting here and there, while leaning up against the wall was about the ugliest man Verily Cooper had ever seen, who wasn't actually injured in some way. Tall, though, just like they said, a giraffe among men.

Lincoln was in the middle of a story. "So Coz says to me, Abe, isn't the front of the raft supposed to point downriver? And I says to Coz, And so it is. And he says to me, No, Abe, that's the front. And he pointed upstream, which made no sense at all. Well, now, that kind of illogic always riles me, not a lot, just a little, and I says, Now Coz, that was the front of the raft this morning, I agree, but wasn't it us decided which end of the raft was front? And therefore are we not entitled to change our minds and designate a new front, as circumstances change?"

Now Verily hardly knew what the story was about, and he certainly did not know this Coz fellow Abe was talking about. But when the people in that store laughed-which they did about every six words, on average-he couldn't help but join in. It wasn't just what Lincoln said, it was how he said it, such a dry manner, and willing to make himself the fool of the story, but a fool with a sort of deeper wit about him.

What was most interesting to Verily, though, was the way Lincoln fit with the other folks in that room. There was not a soul there who had even the slightest friction between him and Lincoln. They all fit with him like a bosom friend. And yet he couldn't be best friends with every one of them. A man doesn't have time to make more than a couple of friends so close and dear that they don't envy you when you do well or scorn you when you do badly or become irritated with you for any number of little habits you have.

It went way beyond being likable. Verily had met a few who had something of a knack for that-you find them rather thick on the ground in the lawyering profession-and he found that no matter how good their knack was, when you weren't with them, you were really angry at being taken in, and even when you were in that spell, some of that anger remained with you. Verily would sense it, but it wasn't there. No, these people weren't being hoodwinked, and Lincoln wasn't doing it by some sort of hidden power. He was just telling stories, and they were enjoying both the tale and the teller.

It didn't take Verily Cooper much time to notice all this-it was his knack, after all. The story continued and Lincoln showed no sign of noticing that Verily Cooper was there.

"Now Coz, he thinks about this-so he's holding really still, because you know when Coz is thinking, it kind of uses up his whole body, unless he has gas-and finally he says to me, Abe, I used to think that way myself, only I found that no matter what you call it, you got to put your legs into the top of your trousers first."

It took some of them a couple of moments to get the joke, but the thing is, they all knew they were going to get it and that the joke wasn't meant to exclude them. Verily found himself liking Lincoln, not just the instinctive liking that came by reflex, but also the liking that comes when you've understood something about a fellow and you admire the thing you understood. Abraham Lincoln doesn't put himself above anybody, but he doesn't lower himself to do it.

"But here we are ignoring our visitor," said Lincoln. "A new fellow, and a lawyer, would be my guess, and so eager to shop at Cheaper's that he hasn't looked for a room or brushed down his clothes."

"Or stabled my horse," said Verily. "But I have urgent business that couldn't wait for such niceties."

"And yet you came to Cheaper's and listened to my story about Coz and me on the river. You must come from a town even smaller than Springfield, if my tale caused you enough wonder to keep you from your business."

"No sir," said Verily Cooper. "Because you're Abraham Lincoln, and my business is to talk to you."

"Please don't tell me I've got another creditor I didn't know about."

There was still laughter from the others, but it was rueful- and a bit wary. They didn't want ill things to happen to Mr. Lincoln.

In fact, one of the ladies spoke up. "If your client thinks that Mr. Lincoln won't pay his debts, he can rest assured, Old Abe never leaves a debt unpaid."