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.
Every morning, except when there were chores to do at home, he and Sally
took a path through the woods to the log schoolhouse. Master Crawford
kept a "blab" school. The "scholars," as he called his pupils, studied
their lessons out loud. The louder they shouted, the better he liked it.
If a scholar didn't know his lesson, he had to stand in the corner with
a long pointed cap on his head. This was called a dunce cap.

One boy who never had to wear a dunce cap was Abe Lincoln. He was too
smart. His side won nearly every spelling match. He was good at
figuring, and he had the best handwriting of anyone at school. Master
Crawford taught reading from the Bible, but he had several other books