if we keep our fire going."

It was a busy winter. Abe worked side by side with his father. How that
boy can chop! thought Nancy, as she heard the sound of his ax biting
into wood. Tree after tree had to be cut down before crops could be
planted. With the coming of spring, he helped his father to plow the
stumpy ground. He learned to plow a straight furrow. He planted seeds in
the furrows.

In the meantime, some of the neighbors helped Tom build a cabin. It had
one room, with a tiny loft above. The floor was packed-down dirt. There
were no windows. The only door was a long, up-and-down hole cut in one
wall and covered by a bearskin. But Tom had made a table and several
three-legged stools, and there was a pole bed in one corner. Nancy was
glad to be living in a real house again, and she kept it neat and clean.

She was no longer lonely. Aunt Betsy and her husband, Uncle Thomas,
brought Dennis with them from Kentucky to live in the shelter near the
Lincoln cabin. Several other new settlers arrived, settlers with
children. A schoolmaster, Andrew Crawford, decided to start a school.

"Maybe you'll have a chance to go, Abe," Nancy told him. "You know what
the schoolmaster down in Kentucky said. He said you were a learner."

Abe looked up at her and smiled. He was going to like living in Indiana!

3

[Illustration]

But sad days were coming to Pigeon Creek. There was a terrible sickness.
Aunt Betsy and Uncle Thomas died, and Dennis came to live with the
Lincolns. Then Nancy was taken ill. After she died, her family felt that
nothing would ever be the same again.

Sally tried to keep house, but she was only twelve. The one little room
and the loft above looked dirtier and more and more gloomy as the weeks
went by. Sally found that cooking for four people was not easy. The
smoke from the fireplace got into her eyes. Some days Tom brought home a
rabbit or a squirrel for her to fry. On other days, it was too cold to
go hunting. Then there was only cornbread to eat and Sally's cornbread
wasn't very good.

It was hard to know who missed Nancy more--Tom or the children. He sat
around the cabin looking cross and glum. The ground was frozen, so very
little work could be done on the farm. He decided, when Andrew Crawford
started his school, that Abe and Sally might as well go. There was
nothing else for them to do, and Nancy would have wanted it.

For the first time since his mother's death Abe seemed to cheer up.