"Which I mostly accomplish by never borrowing," said Lincoln.

"Never borrowing for yourself, you mean," said the lady. A lady considerably older than Lincoln, but Verily ruled out the possibility that she was related to him. No, she had probably come here simply to buy something.

"Mr. Lincoln, my name is Verily Cooper, and we have a friend in common-Alvin Smith, whom I believe you met on a trip down the Mizzippy not more than a couple of weeks ago."

"A good man," said Lincoln-but added nothing more.

"What," said one of the men. "No story about this Smith fellow?"

Lincoln grinned. "Why, you know I don't tell stories on other folks, only on myself." He strode toward Verily and offered a hand. "I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Cooper. Though I got to fess that's a strange name for a lawyer."

"I was raised to be a cooper," said Verily, "and when the lawyering business is slow, I can always support myself by making a keg or two."

"Whereas my family could never get over the shire they came from back in England," said Lincoln. "Which, judging from your speech, is where you're from."

"I am, but a citizen of this country now," said Verily. "We're none of us very far from the boats that brought our people over."

"Well, I'm eager to talk to you," said Lincoln, "but I'm the clerk of this store right now, working for Mr. and Mrs. Cheaper, and I've been keeping these poor customers waiting for their purchases while I listened to myself talk. Can you wait your business for a half hour?"

Verily could, and did. In fact, he used the half hour to get his horse stabled and fed, and when he returned, there were no customers in the shop. Lincoln did not look so jovial now.

"Mr. Cooper," he said, "there ain't been time for good news to get from Barcy to here, but I heard some bad stories about yellow fever breaking out there. I hope you're not here to tell me that Alvin or his young friend with the royal name has took sick."

"Best of health, as far as I know," said Verily.

"Also there's a strange tale came upriver on a steamboat and got included in the daily lie collection known as the Springfield Democrat. About all the slaves in Barcy walking on water and the Spanish Army coming upriver to fetch them back. I got to say, some folks-the ones foolish enough to believe a tale like that-are now worried that Spain is going to invade Springfield, and I've been trying to get Mr. Cheaper to order some Spanish grammars to get us ready for the occupation, but he won't do it."

"And you guessed that Alvin had something to do with this exodus."

"I hoped," said Lincoln. "Because if a man's going to get in trouble, it ought to be in a good cause, and Alvin has that air about him, that whatever he does, somebody's going to be mad at him for doing it."

"I came here because he needs some help, and you're the only person we could think of who might be able to handle it."

"Well, I'll help him if I can. I owe him something, you know."

"That's not why we're asking," said Verily. "This isn't a debt, because whatever you think you might owe him, what he's asking is way bigger."

"What could be bigger than saving my life?"

"The lives of five or six thousand French folks and former slaves, who have no place of safety to which they can repair in their time of trouble."

"I can put up three of them in my room over the tavern, but not one more, and that's if they don't mind getting stepped on if somebody has to get up in the night to use the privy."

"They're coming up the river and they need a place that will take them in and protect them. Alvin's wife, Margaret Larner-you may have heard of her..."

"Highly thought of among abolitionists," said Lincoln, "though not by those who think the only way to free the slaves is by war."

"Margaret is, as you may also have heard, a torch."

"That doesn't get mentioned even in the pro-slavery press, and you'd think they'd make a big deal of it."

"She retired from the public use of her knack," said Verily. "But she still sees what she sees, and what she saw was this: The only way this expedition of runaway slaves and Frenchmen is going to find any peace or safety is with your help."

Lincoln's bony face suddenly looked sad. "Mr. Cooper, I hope your friend is ready for disappointment."

"You won't do it?"

"Oh, I'll do whatever I can. But you got to understand something. Everything I turn my hand to fails. I mean everything. I think I've got a knack for failure, because I manage it no matter what I undertake to do."

"I don't know," said Verily. "You tell a good story."

"Well, that's not something a man can make a living at."

"I do," said Verily.

"Telling stories? Forgive me for saying it, but you don't look like the humorous type."

"I didn't say my stories were funny, but it wouldn't hurt a bit in my profession if I had a little more humor from time to time."

"You're saying that lawyers are storytellers?"

"That's our main job. We take a set of facts, and we tell a story that includes them all and doesn't leave out or contradict a one of them. The other fellow's lawyer then takes the same facts and tells a different story. And the jury believes one story or they believe the other."

Lincoln laughed. "Why, you make your profession sound almost as useless as loafing around in a general store telling silly stories to help folks pass the time of day."

"Do you really believe that's all you do?" asked Verily.

"I think the evidence of your own eyes should confirm that story, sir," said Lincoln.

"My eyes see what your eyes can't," said Verily Cooper. "This town is a happy place-one of the happiest towns, house for house and man for man, that I've ever seen."

"It's a good place to live, and it's good neighbors make it that way, I always say," said Lincoln.

"A town's like a living thing," said Verily. "It all fits together like a body-not an attractive body, because there's a head of this and a head of that, and all kinds of arms and legs and fingers, but you get my analogy, I'm sure."

"Everybody's got his place," said Lincoln.

"Ah, but most towns have people who can't find their place, or aren't happy with it, or are trying to take a place that they're not suited for, or hurt somebody who belongs there just as much as they do. But from the feel of this town I'd say there's not too much of that."

"We got our skunks, like any other town. When they get their tail up, folks know to duck for cover."

"This town has a heart," said Verily.

"I'm glad you could see that," said Lincoln.

"And the heart is you."

Lincoln laughed. "Oh, I didn't see that coming. You do have a sense of humor after all, Mr. Cooper."

Verily just smiled. "Mr. Lincoln, I think if you set yourself to figuring out where these five or six thousand souls might find refuge, you'd not only come up with a good answer, but you'd be the very man best suited to persuading folks to let them go there."

Lincoln looked off into the distance. "I'm a terrible salesman," he finally said. "I always tell the truth about what I'm selling, and then nobody buys it."

"But how are you at pleading for the downtrodden? Especially when every word you'd say about them would be true?"

"In case you haven't noticed, Mr. Cooper, the downtrodden get less popular as their numbers increase. A man approached by one beggar is likely to give him a penny. A man approached by five beggars in one day won't give a thing to the last one. And a man approached by five beggars at once will run away and claim he was being robbed."

"Which is why we need to have a refuge for these folks before anybody can see with their own eyes how many they are."

"Oh, I know how many five thousand is. It's about four times the population of Springfield, and about equal to the population of this whole county."