"Well, what then?" she asked the gold hunter.

"Same time," said "California," still to the Courteneys, while madame promptly discerned his covert argument and Ramsey suddenly busied herself talking up to the pilot-house, "I noticed, more'n eveh, how much she, Phyllis, favoh'd somebody I was once 'pon a time pow'ful soft on, but whose image"—his smile won smiles again—"I to'e out o' my heart—aw buried in thah—aw both—it bein' too ridiculous fo' me to aspiah that high. An' so here looked to me like a substitute, gentlemen, that ought to satisfy all concerned." His eye turned to madame but lost courage and escaped back to Hugh.

"Now, Mr. Hugh, I've got money a-plenty. It's all I have got excep' maybe a good tempeh, an' I'm goin' back to the diggin's anyhow; one man to the squa' mile is too crowded fo' me. Meantime, madam"—he turned again and this time he was invincible, although madame straightened and sparkled and Ramsey gave a staring attention, having throughout all her pilot-house talk heard everything——"Meantime, madam, with a priest right here on boa'd, if I can buy, at any price, Phyllis's free papehs——"

"You can't!" chanted Ramsey. "She can have 'em for nothing but nobody can buy 'em."

"Pries'?" asked madame, "an' free pape'! W'at you pro-ose do with those pries' an' free pape'?"

"I'll marry her; marry her an' take her to whah a woman's a woman fo' a' that an' can clean house aw cook dinneh whilst I gatheh the honeycomb bright as gold and drive the wolf to his secret hold." He cast around the group a glance of bright inquiry, but except old Joy every one silently looked at every one else. The old woman softly closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Vote!" cried Ramsey, remembering Sunday's victory. "Let's vote on it!"



LV

LOVE MAKES A CUT-OFF

But the grandfather addressed the adventurer. "You'd rather not, I fancy."

"Rather not; looks too unanimous the wrong way."

"Would you still like to have Hugh's advice?"

"I would! I'd like to hear yo'-all's argument."

Ramsey dropped into her chair with a tired sigh and up-stream gaze though with an inner ear of keenest attention.

Hugh glanced toward his father's door, whence at any moment, as every one realized, the actor might beckon.

"I have no argument," he began.

"You have," breathed a voice, unmistakably Ramsey's; "you always have."

"You know," he continued to the Kentuckian, "there's something in all of us, I don't say what, or whether wise or foolish, that says: 'Don't do it.' You feel it, don't you?"

Madame interrupted: "Mais don't do w'at?"

Ramsey faced the group as if to answer just that question. "Now we pass between Cedar Point and Pecan Point and head for the Second Chickasaw Bluffs!"

"Ah bah, les bloff'," murmured madame and repeated to Hugh: "Something say, 'Don' do it'? Mais w'at it say don' do?"

"Don't mix the great races we know apart by their color."

"Umph! An' w'at is thad something w'at tell uz that?"

"Grandfather calls it race conscience."

"Grandfather!" whimpered Ramsey, while madame asked:

"Of w'at race has Phylliz the conscien'? An' you would know Phylliz' race—ad sight—by the color?"

"I'd know it!" put in the Kentuckian. "She's white, to all intents and purposes."

"No," said Hugh, "not quite to all. Not to all as organized society, in its——"

Ramsey, with eyes up the river, sighed: "Mrs. Grundy?"

"Yes, but Mrs. Grundy in her best intents and purposes."

"In her race conscience," wailed Ramsey to the breeze.

"In her race conscience," assented Hugh.

Ramsey whipped around. "Thought you had no argument."

"I'm giving grandfather's," said the grandson.

"Humph! it's yours. I'd know it at sight—by the color."

"Miss Ramsey," said the old man, toying with his cane, "Hugh and I have been finding that, right or wrong, Mrs. Grundy or Mr. Grundy, race conscience is a wonderful, unaccountable thing for which men will give their life-blood by thousands." His voice failed. He waved smilingly to Hugh.

"And when," broke in Hugh to Ramsey, "when Mrs. Grundy, in her race conscience, says Phyllis is not white no one ought to snap his fingers in even Mrs. Grundy's face merely to please himself or to relieve some private situation."

Ramsey stood up, flashing first on him and then to her mother, dropped again, and with her face in her elbow on the chair's back recited drearily—from her third reader:

"You can hear him swing his heavy sledge With measured beat and slow, Like the sexton ringing the village bell When the evening sun——"

"Ramzee!" exclaimed madame, while the old nurse groaned: "Oh, Lawd 'a' massy!"

The girl rose, laughed, and flashed again: "Well, if Phyllis ain't white what is she? She's got to be something!"

"Yes," said the youth, "but not everything. I know her wrongs. But none of us, with whatever rights and wrongs, can have, or do, or be——"

"Oh, don't we know all that?" Ramsey turned to the grandfather and with sudden deference sprang to help him rise. He faced her and the Californian together.

"Miss Ramsey, Hugh has all your feelings in this matter."

Madame, "California," and old Joy eagerly assented.

"But poor, blundering old Mrs. Grundy, always wronging some one," the old man smilingly continued, "is really fighting hard for a better human race. That's the greatest battle she can fight, my dear young lady, and when——"

"Well," rejoined Ramsey with eyes frankly tearful, "she fights it mighty badly."

"Ah, a hundred times worse than you think. Yet we who presume to fight the blunders of that battle must fight them unselfishly and to help her win."

Old Joy groaned so approvingly that he turned to her.

"What do you think, old mammy?"

"Who, me? Lawd, I thinks mighty little an' I knows less. Yit one thing I does know: Phyllis ain' gwine. She know' you cayn't make her white by takin' her to whah it make' no odds ef she ain't white. Phyllis love' folks. She love' de quality, she love' de crowd. White aw black aw octoroom free niggeh, Phyllis gwine to choose de old Hayle home and de great riveh—full o' steamboat'—sooneh'n any lan' whah de ain't mo'n one 'oman to de mile. Phyllis ain't gwine."

The closing words faded to soliloquy. For every one stood up, and even the old woman's attention was diverted to Watson's apprentice approaching from the captain's room. On his way below for the doctor he came, in the actor's behalf, to ask if he might bring up also Mrs. Gilmore.

Assuredly he might. How was the patient?

"Very quiet," the boy hopefully replied. Whereupon madame begged leave to repair at once to the sick-room, but neither of the Courteneys would consent nor either of them allow the other to go. The steersman passed on down.

From enviously watching him do so, "California" turned to the company and in open abandonment of his amazing proposition said drolly that never before had he failed, in so many ways "hand-running," to make himself useful. He reseated Madame Hayle and would have set the daughter beside her, but the mother bade Ramsey give Joy the chair and leaned wearily on the old woman's shoulder. Both Courteneys urged their seats on the girl, and when she would not accept while either of them stood for her servant to sit, the grandfather left Hugh debating with her, took "California's" arm, found other chairs a few paces away, and engaged him in a gentle parley which any one might see was an appeal to his sober second thought. It was Ned's shift up at the wheel, but the change of watch was near; his partner stood at his elbow. Their gaze was up a reach between the two most northern of those four groups of bluffs whose mention even Ramsey was for the moment tired of, yet they studied the three couples on the roof below.

"Runs smooth at the present writing," said Watson.

"Clair chann'l ef noth'n' else," responded Ned. The allusion was neither to boat nor stream but to a certain opportuneness of things, whose obviousness to them, looking down, was mainly what kept Ramsey standing. While she stood beside the two empty chairs cross-questioning Hugh with a fresh show of her maturer mildness and he stood inwardly taking back his late farewell to sweet companionship and softly answering in his incongruous pomp of voice with a new tenderness, and while the worn-out mother gradually let her full weight sink on the tired slave, this obvious propitiousness was embarrassingly increased by the two weary ones falling asleep.

True, the clearness of channel—this channel in the upper air—was not absolute, but its obstacles nettled mostly the pilots. To Ramsey, even to Hugh, obstacles were almost welcome, as enabling them to show to a prying world that nothing beyond the grayest commonplace was occurring between them. One such interruption was the upcoming and passing of Mrs. Gilmore and the physician to the sick-room and the cub pilot's parting with them to join the younger pair. The boy found Hugh confessing that he should not know exactly how to word Phyllis's "free papers" but adding that the first clerk would be pleased to make them out at once if Ramsey's eagerness so dictated. It did, and presently the modest intruder was hurrying away on a double errand: to bear this confidential request to the clerk and then to seek the Brothers Ambrosia and with them and the two under-clerks arrange for the evening performance, the giving of which, however, Ramsey insisted, must depend on the captain's condition when evening should come.

"Wish it were here now," she said as they watched the messenger go. "Don't you?"

"I could," he replied, "but it will be here soon enough."

The conversation which followed remained in their memory through years of separation.

She spoke again in her new tone: "You think your father will get well, don't you?"

"No, Ramsey."

At those words her heart did two things at once: stopped on the first, rebounded on the second. But it fell again as he added: "I fear I must lose my father to-night."

She stood mute, looking into his eyes and pondering every light and shadow of the severe young face that to her seemed so imperially unlike all others. "He's great," she said in her heart. "And he loves with his greatness. Loves even his father that way; not as I love mine or love anybody, or ever shall or can, or could wish to, unless I were a man and as great as him—he. I never could have dreamt of any one loving me that way, but if any ever should I'd worship him." Suddenly her sympathy rose high.

"Oh, why not just think to yourself: 'He will live'?"

"Why should I? Should I be fit to live myself if I were not true to myself?"

"You are! You always are!"

"No one can be who isn't truthful to himself."

Ramsey gazed again. A sense of his suffering benumbed her, and for relief she asked: "Is that why you don't wish it were evening, when really you do?"

He smiled. "I can't wish the sun to get out of my way. That's what it would mean, isn't it?"

She fell to thinking what it meant. All at once she pointed: "That's the First Chickasaw Bluff.... Yes, I s'pose it does mean that.... It's terrible how thoughtless I am."

"It doesn't terrify me. I promise you it never shall."

Was he making game of her? She narrowed her lids and looked at him sidewise. No, plainly he was not; so plainly that she took refuge in another question. "Don't you like night better than day sometimes?"

"I do, often."

"Why?"

"For one thing, we can see so much farther."

"Oh, ridiculous! we can't see nearly so far!"

"We can see so much farther and wider, deeper, clearer. The day blinds us. Spoils our sense of proportion. At night we see more of what creation really is. Our sun becomes one little star among thousands of greater ones, and we are humbled into a reasonableness which is very hard not to lose in the bewilderments of daylight."

Ramsey sank to the arm of a chair, but when he remained standing she stood again. "Wasn't you saying something like that the evening we left New Orleans?" she asked.

"To my father, yes. I couldn't have said it in daylight then. I couldn't say it in daylight now to any one but you, Ramsey."

Her heart leaped again. Her eyes looked straight into his; could not look away. He spoke on:

"You're a kind of evening to me, yourself; evening star."

Her bosom pounded. She glanced up behind to the pilots. Watson had the wheel. As she strenuously pushed back her curls she felt her temples burn. She could have cried aloud for Hugh to cease, yet was mad for him to go on.

And so he did. "You are my evening star in this nightfall of affliction. I tell you so not in weakness but in strength and in defiance: in the strength I summon for the hour before me; in the defiance I fling to your brothers. I may never have another chance. If ours were the ordinary chances of ordinary life I should say nothing now. I should wait; wait and give love time; time to prove itself in me—in both of us. I ask nothing. I am too new to you, life is too new—to you—for pledges."

She flashed him a glance and then, looking up the river, said, with the ghost of a toss: "I'm older than you think."

He ignored the revelation. "But I will say," he went on, "—for these three days and nights have been three years to me and I feel a three years' right to say—I love you; love you for life; am yours for life though we never meet again. For I believe that we belong to each other from the centre of our souls, by a fitness plain even to the eyes of your brothers."



Still looking up the flood and red from brow to throat, Ramsey murmured two or three words which she saw he did not hear. Yet he stood without sound or look to ask what she had said, and presently repeated:

"I believe in God's sight we belong to each other."

"So do I," said Ramsey again, with clearer voice and with her brimming eyes looking straight into his. A footfall turned her and she faced the relieved pilot.

"Isn't this Island Thirty-three," she asked, "right here on our starboard bow?"

"Thirty-three," assented Ned. "Alias Flour Island; but not Flow-er Island. Flour-ladened flatboats wrecked there in the days o' yo' grandfather, Eliphalet Hayle, whose own boats they might 'a' been, only Hayles ain't never been good at losin' boats. But his'n or not, can you suspicion they wuz flow-er-ladened? Shucks! them that spell it that-a-way air jest as bad an' no wuss than them that stick b onto Plum in Plum P'int an' pull the y out o' Hayle fo' Hayle's P'int! They jest a-airin' they ignorance. Some fellers love to air they ignorance. I do, myself."

He gave these facts of topography in reward of the grave interest that Hugh—elated interest that Ramsey—still seemed to take in all such items, as well as to allow them to infer that he had not noticed them betraying interest in anything more personal.

"Hayle's P'int—" he resumed, and when Madame Hayle and old Joy roused and glanced around on him, while the senator and the general reappeared close by, looking back down the steamer's wake with military comments on the First Chickasaw Bluff, just left behind, he addressed them all as one. Hayle's Point, he persisted, was miles away yet and comparatively unimportant "considerin' its name," but the small cluster of houses on the Arkansas side up in the next bend was Osceola, where Plum Point Bars made the "wickedest" bit of river between Saint Louis and the Gulf; a bit that "killed" at least one steamboat every year. He said they were then passing a sand-bar, under water at this stage, which had been Island Thirty-two until "swallered whole" by the "big earthquake" of 1811.

"Better'n forty year' ago, that was. Only quake ever felt in these parts, but so big that, right in the middle of all the b'ilin' an' staggerin' an' sinkin' down to Chiny, the Mis'sippi River give birth to her fust steamboat—an' saved it!" So he continued, egged on by the conviction that, over and above the intrinsic value of the facts, these conversational eddies outside the current of incident "a-happ'min' to 'em yit" helped forward his two most deeply interested hearers on that course erroneously supposed never to run smooth.

Be that as it may, the two pilots' joint theory of maxims working as well backward as forward worked here; deep waters ran still. Love, that is, having broken intolerable bounds in one short fierce "chute" of declaration, was content to run deep and still and to give broad precedence to duties, sorrows, and courtesies. The pair noticeably drifted apart and conversed with others when others were quite willing they should drift together. Madame Hayle needed but a glance or so to perceive that something beautiful had happened in the spiritual experience of her daughter. By and by when the commodore and the Californian rejoined the group, Hugh and his grandfather spent a still moment looking into each other's eyes and when both gazes relaxed at once the story had been told and understood.

They turned to hear what was passing between the general, senator, and Californian. Said the soldier:

"Sssirs, I only insssist that if this region ever sees war Port Hudson, Grand Gulf, Vvvicksburg, these fffour Chickasaw Bluffs, and Island Ten up here above us will be imp-regnably fffortified."

Ramsey turned to the actor's wife as she came from the texas.

"How's the captain?" asked both she and her mother. But Mrs. Gilmore was too overcome to reply.

Ramsey saw the actor at the stateroom door. He had beckoned. Hugh and the grandfather were on their way. At a quieter pace the four women followed and more slowly still the other four men. Reaching Gilmore, the Courteneys paused and spoke, then looked back to Ramsey and madame, and beckoned—Hugh to the mother, the commodore to Ramsey. Gilmore repeated the gesture and they glided forward. At the same time the player advanced to meet his wife, and, as if some intuition had rung the call, the scene-loving twins appeared in the senator's halted group and stood with them gazing, while Madame Hayle, the commodore, Ramsey, and Hugh entered the captain's room.



LVI

EIGHT YEARS AFTER

"A hundred months," says the love-song that beguiled so many thousands of hearts throughout the Mississippi Valley in those old "Lily Dale," "Nellie Gray," "What is Home Without a Mother?" days, when the lugubrious was so blithely enjoyed at the piano. Its first wails date nearly or quite back to October, 1860.

"A hundred months had passed" since that first up-stream voyage of the Votaress, or, to be punctilious, something under a hundred and two. It was the opening week of that mid-autumn month in which it became evident that Abraham Lincoln would be the next president. Another new boat, new pride of the great river, the fairest yet, still in the hands of her contractors, and on her trial trip from Louisville to New Orleans, was rounding, one after another, now far in the east, now as far in the west, the bends nearest below Memphis: Cow Island, Cat Island, St. Francis, Delta—so on.

The river was low. You would hardly have known a reach, a cut-off, a point of it by any aspect remembered from that journey of April, '52. Scantness of waters appeared to contract distances. "Paddy's Hen and Chickens," just above Memphis, were all out on dry sands and seemed closer under the "Devil's Elbow" than eight years before. Every towhead and bar and hundreds of snags were above water and as ugly as mud, age, sun bleach, and turkey-buzzards could make them. Many a chute comfortably run by the Votaress was now "closed for repairs," said one of the pilots of the Enchantress. He was the whilom steersman we knew as Watson's cub; a very capable-looking man now. At the moment, he was off watch and had come out from the bar to the boiler deck with a trim, supple man of forty, whose shirt of fine white flannel was open at the throat, where a soft neckerchief of red silk matched the sash at his waist: "California," eight years older and out of the West again despite his "never" to Hayle's twins.

"I like to change my mind sometimes," he explained. "It shows me I've got one."

A towering, massive, grizzly man several years older than the Californian, with a short, stiff, throat-latch beard and a great bush of dense, short curls, stood by the forward guards, a picture of rude force and high efficiency. At every moment, from some direction among the deck's loungers a light scrutiny ventured to rest on him, to which he seemed habituated, and the lightest was enough to reveal in him a striking union of traits coarse and fine. He wore a big cluster diamond pin, a sort of hen-and-chickens of his own, secured by a minute guard-chain on a ruffled shirt-front of snowiest linen, where clung dry crumbs of the "fine-cut" which puffed the lower side pockets of his gray alpaca sack coat. His gold-headed cane was almost a bludgeon. He had come aboard at Memphis, having reached that city but a few hours earlier by rail-way train from White Sulphur Springs, Va., where he had had the good fortune to find great relief from rheumatism. The young lady in his company, now back in the ladies' cabin, was his daughter, they said, beautiful and all of twenty-two, yet unmarried! This man the pilot and the Californian approached and waited for his attention. When he gave it the pilot spoke.

"Commodore," he said, "welcome back to the river."

The big man grew bigger and his shaggy brows more severe.

"I feel welcome," he said. "Only place under God's canopy where I can breathe down into my boots."

"And you want the roof for it here, don't you? I do. Roof or wheel. Commodore Hayle, my friend Mr. So-and-so, from California. He's your brand; Kentuck' born and raised."

The two shook hands, scanning each other's countenances. The eyes of both were equally blue, equally intrepid.

"Are you the man—?" Hayle began to ask with grim humor.

"I think so."

"Well, my boy, I've been wanting to see you for better than eight years." The speaker glanced around for privacy.

"Come up," said the pilot; "I'm just going on watch." They followed him. On the roof he continued:

"Seen Captain Hugh yet, commodore? He's sure enough captain now, you know; youngest on the river. He was looking for you a bit ago. This is a beautiful boat he's going to have, eh?"

"Humph, yes. Votaress over again." The critic gave her a fresh scrutiny from cutwater to stern rail, from freight guards to the oak-leaf crown on either chimney-top.

"Why, commodore, she knocks the hindsights off the old Votaress every way. You'll see that mighty quick."

"Humph, yes; best yet, of the Courteney type. Ridiculous, how they hang to that. I'll build a boat to beat her inside a year if old Abe ain't elected. If he is, we'll just build gunboats and raise particular hell." On the skylight the speaker amiably declined to climb any higher.

"No, us two Kentuck's will try it here." The pair found seats together, and soon the Californian was making the best of an opportunity he, no less than Gideon Hayle, had coveted for eight years. It interested him keenly, as affording a glimpse into the famous boatman's character, that the latter showed a grasp of the dreadful voyage's story as vivid and clear in each of its two versions—the mother and daughter's and the twins'—as though the intervening months had been one instead of a hundred—and two.

They rehearsed together the arrival of the Votaress at Louisville in the dead of night; confessed the folly of any "outsider" seeking the grief-burdened Gideon's ear in that first hour of reunion with his family, and the equal unwisdom of his pressing, in such an hour, an acute personal question upon Hugh and his grandfather who, at Paducah, had just buried John Courteney.

"And you've never pressed it sence?" asked "California."

"Mm-no."

"Nor let either o' them press it?"

"No!"—a sturdy oath—"nor you nor anybody alive. Go on with your story."

The gold hunter went on unruffled; told it as he had seen it occur; recounted, among other things, how, on the final landing of the immigrants, at Cairo, Marburg and not a few besides had covered Madame Hayle's hands with kisses and tears and would have done Hugh Courteney's so could they have got at him. His hearer frowned and set his big jaw, but the narrative flowed on, describing how, like Marburg, many had waved affectionate farewells to Hugh and to Ramsey which she could guess no reason for in her case except her own wet eyes, but which "California" saw was because, through himself and Phyllis, the immigrants had found her out as another who believed in letting the oppressed go free and come free. He told even those irrelevant things about himself which had made him ludicrous. They imparted a needed lightness and kindled the big commodore's smile.

"They never found out," said "California," "that the fellow who played 'Bounding Billow' and 'A Life on the Ocean Wave' was me—I—myself."

He told all as honestly, fearlessly as we might know he would. When his huge listener tried to say off-handedly that every man who knew anything knew that women and men never see things alike and that different witnesses could, quite honestly, give irreconcilable accounts of the same thing, the Californian serenely waved away all such gloss and with the seated giant hanging over him like a thunder-cloud said that the twins could never see anything straight enough to tell the truth about it if they wanted to and that just as certainly they often didn't want to. Pausing there and getting no retort, he ventured another step. Said he:

"And there you've hung the case up for eight years."

"That's my business!" Gideon smote the arm of his chair.

"California" laughed a moment like a girl, with drooping head. Then—oh, the twins had their good points, yes. One was the way they stuck to each other. And their biggest virtue, their "best holt," the one their worst enemy couldn't help liking them for, was their invincible sand.

"The devil couldn't scare 'em with his tail red-hot."

At that the father laughed gratefully.

"They'd ought to be in some trade where pluck," the Californian went on, "is the whole show. They'd ought to be soldiers. As plain up-and-down fighters for fight'n's sake, commodore, they'd hit it off as sweet as blackstrap!"

The truth smote hard but the parent feigned a jovial inappreciation. If that was so they had made a "most damnable misdeal," he laughed, having settled down in Natchez together, "too soft on each other to marry and as tame as parrakeets"; Julian as county sheriff, his brother a physician.

The Californian silently doubted the tameness. Abruptly, though in tones of worship, he inquired after Madame Hayle.

Madame just then was at home, on the plantation at Natchez. Yes, she and Ramsey often made trips with Gideon on that Paragon which they had gone up the river to come down on, in '52. The Paragon, wonderfully preserved, was still in the "Vicksburg and Bends" trade and happened then to be some forty-eight hours ahead of the Enchantress and nearing New Orleans. Madame and her daughter now and then spent part of the social season in the great river's great seaport, which was—"bound to be the greatest in the world, my boy," said Gideon. But Ramsey——

When Ramsey became the topic, even "California," while the father boasted, had to hold on, as he would have said, with his teeth to keep from being blown away. Her "one and only love" was the river! She "knew it like a pilot" and loved it and the whole life on it not merely for its excitements, variety, and outlook on the big world.

"That is to say——for its poetry," prompted "California."

"Yes, not for that only but just as much for its prose, by Mike! Why, my boy, that's all that's kept her single!"

"Except!" said the Californian softly, but Gideon pressed on. "And single, now, I reckon, she'll always be. Why, sir, not a day breaks but she knows, within an hour's run, the whereabouts of every Hayle boat alive."

"Some Courteney boats too, hmm?"

"Why, eh"—a stare—"I shouldn't wonder. Yes. Humph! 'youngest captain on the river'—fact is, that's her. Lady as she is, and lovely as she is, she's a better steamboatman to-day than—than many a first-class one. She's nearer being my business partner than any man I ever hired."

"Partner's share of the swag?"

"No," laughed the giant, "but I'm leaving her the boats."

"Well," said "California," "all that's good preparation."

The huge man shot him a glance and the two pairs of blue eyes held each other. Then "California" smiled his winsomest and said: "Did you ever notice how much easier you can see through the ends of an iron pipe than through its sides?"

Gideon stared. "Humph! Any fool that wants to see through me may see and be—joyful. What do you think you see?"

"Oh, things you'd ought to thought of and never have."

"Why, you in'—Well, I'll be damned."

"Shouldn't wonder a bit," said "California" so amiably that the big man laughed.

"Maybe you'll tell me my oversights!"

"No, but you'll be told, shortly, if the man I think I know is the man I—think I know. Let's pass that now, commodore. Oh, I wish you'd been with us on the Votaress. How different things might 'a' turned out. You know? I don't believe any other trip on all this big river, barring the first steamboat's first, ever made so big a turning-point in so many lives. Why, jest two or three things in it, things and people, made me another man."

"One not so need'n' to be hanged?"

"Yes, and not so hungry to hang other fellers. I hadn't ever met up with such aristocratic stock as I did then but I tchuned right up to 'em and I've mighty nigh held their pitch ever sence. Fo'most of all was this Hugh Courteney. Fo'most because, he being a man, I wa'n't afraid of him. But a close second was yo' daughter; second because, she being a woman, I was afraid of her. Why, even Phyllis, that's now chambermaid on this boat——"

"By Jupiter!" Gideon Hayle half started from his seat. "On this boat? our Phyllis? that Ramsey set free?"

"Yes. Captain Hugh's nurse that was."

"Look here, my boy, is that why you're aboard?"

"No, sir-ee! Don't you fret. That trip, I tell you, made another man of me. It lifted; why, commodore, it made me a poet."

"Made you a—Oh, go 'long off!"

"Yes, sir. Writ poetry ever sence. Dropped prose; too easy. It's real poetry, commodore; rhymes as slick as grease. Show you some of it later."

"George! if you do I'll jump into the river."

"Agreed! I've got some that'll make you do that."

"You haven't got any that wouldn't."

Neither smiled, neither frowned. Obviously each knew how to like an adversary and when "California" rose and the two, glancing aft, saw another two approaching from the pilot-house, one of whom was Watson, Hayle touched the poet detainingly and said:

"Don't go 'way, I want some more of your prose."

"Want to know why I'm here? Not countin' the fun o' seein' Captain Hugh, half the reason's that gentleman yonder comin' with Mr. Watson, and the other half's his lady, down below a-powwowin' with yo' daughter. Fact is I'd struck it rich again out West and got restless and come East, and at Saint Louis I see by a newspaper that them two was allowin' to go down to Orleans on this boat this trip, and ree-collect-in' the pinch they got into of old on the Votaress, s'I to myself,'me too!'"

Here the other men drew near and, while "California" ran on, silently pressed the big hand offered sidewise by Hayle.

"And with that I set down and writ a poem—took me a whole night—to the best half dozen o' them that was on the other trip, invitin' 'em, at my expense, to jump on when we come by—at New Carthage—Milliken's Bend—Vicksburg—and trustin' to luck and fresh post stamps to find 'em. But little did we dream o' seein' you walk aboard, at Memphis, and still less yo' daughter and her old Joy; did we, Mr. Gilmore?"



LVII

FAREWELL, "VOTARESS"

Montezuma Bend ... Delta ... Delta Bend ... Friar's Point ... Kangaroo Point ... Horseshoe Bend and Cut-off. Some, at least, of these we remember. At mention of them the Gilmores and "California" smiled—behind Ramsey: such a different, surpassingly different Ramsey!

Near the Enchantress's bell these four and old Joy were gathered about Gideon Hayle, Watson, and Hugh Courteney—such an inspiringly different Hugh! Two or three showed a divided attention, letting an occasional glance stray down the waters ahead, where Old Town Bend swung from west to south.

At the same moment, in Horseshoe Cut-off, some twelve or fifteen miles below, another swift, handsome steamer, upward bound—the great river could hardly yet show more than one handsomer—swept into the north from an easterly course under Island Sixty-four and pointed up the middle of the stream to pass between Sixty-three and Sixty-two where, at the head of the reach, they parted the river into three channels and widened it to more than a league. She would have been an animating sight if only for the fact that every soul aboard who was not just then engaged in running her was at the guards of one or another of her graceful decks. The forecastle was darkened by her crew standing in a half circle about the capstan, her larboard pantry guards were crowded with white-jackets, her roofs were gay with ladies and children. In elated oblivion of the charming picture presented by their own boat and themselves, all were awaiting a spectacle which their pilots and captain had said would surely be met within the next hour's run.

Although behind them was a tortuous fifty miles in which hardly more signs of human life had been seen or heard than if their way had been on the open Atlantic, the beauty of the wilderness alone, transfigured in the lights of the declining day, might well have satisfied the eye. A red sun was just touching the horizon. Its beams and the blue shadows that divided them lay level, miles long, athwart the glassy stream and its green and gray forests and tapered and vanished in a low eastern haze. The tints of autumn already prevailed along the shores, and the indolent waters mirrored the reversed images of the two islands in outlines clearer than their own and from bank to bank took on in enriched hues the many colors of the sky. At the far end of the reach, between and somewhat beyond the islands, stood well out of the shrunken flood a sand-bar, its middle crested green and gold with young poplars and willows, all its ill favor made picturesque and the whole mass glorified by the sunset. By this bar the waters of the central channel were again divided, north and south, and the steamer, with another eastward turn, straightened up for the southern passage between the bar and Sixty-three.

"We'll pass her close," said one of the boat's family to those who hung on his words. "In this low water she's got to come round the bar and well over to the left bank, same as us."

On the boiler deck and on the roof passengers of the kind that see for themselves pointed out to the kind that see only what they are shown the smoke of another boat, across the forests on the Arkansas side, in Old Town Bend. There were ways for some to know even at that distance that she was a craft they had never yet seen, but every two minutes the distance grew less by a mile. Presently, as the nearer boat, giving the bar's eastern head a wide berth, swung once more into the north, the Enchantress glided into view on the larboard bow hardly two miles away. But before the Enchantress as well, looking south across the same interval, gleamed a picture worthy of her delight. For there came the Votaress, curling white ribbons from her cutwater, her people waving and cheering, a swivel barking from her prow, and the whistles high up between her chimneys roaring in long salute.

By no premeditation could the unpremeditated scene have been finer. The Votaress, as she took the wider circuit against the Mississippi shore, caught the whole power of the setting sun on all her nearer side while she swept close along an undivided curtain of autumn forest drenched in the same sunlight and quaking to her sudden breeze. North and west of her, where the sand-bar lay bare of trees, the Enchantress, larger, stronger, swifter, moved in her own shade but was set against the far splendor of a saffron, green, and crimson sky in which the fiery sun showed only its upper half sinking beneath the landscape. The lights of all her decks, just lit, gave no vivid ray but glinted like gems on a court lady. Her bridal whiteness was as pure hid from the sunbeams as her sister's bathed in them. From both the high black smoke streamed away through the evening calm and from their twinkling wheels the foam swept after them like trains of lace. We speak for our poet, who, lacking fit imagery of his own, recalled one of Jenny Lind's songs:

"I see afar thy robe of snow, I see thy dark hair wildly flow, I hear thy airy step so light, Thou com'st to wish thy love good night. Good night, my love, good night."

Good night, Votaress! He could not know, nor Ramsey, nor any of those among whom they stood, that these bends were never again to see you in your beauty—though in tragedy, yes! yes! They knew that in the shipyards of the Ohio you were to receive a beautiful rejuvenation; but knew not that then, as a dove may be caught by a lynx, you were to be caught by a great war, a war greater than the great river, and should return to these scenes a transport; a poor, scarred, bedraggled consort to gunboats; slow reptilian monsters of iron ugliness and bellowing ferocity. They knew not of days when you must swarm with blue soldiers—including Marburg—sometimes hot and merry for battle, sometimes shot-torn, fever-wasted, yellow-eyed, a human rubbish of camp and siege, lighter part of the deadly price of conquered strongholds and fallen cities—Forts Henry and Donelson, Columbus, Island Ten, Fort Pillow, Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Memphis; or that, after all, in recovered decency, honored poverty, you should wear out a gentle old age as a wharf-boat to your unspeakable inferiors. And neither could they, those voyagers on the new steamer, foresee the happier vision of their Enchantress living through the war charmedly unscathed, sharing the palmiest days of the Mississippi's navigation without ever being surpassed in speed or beauty, even by younger Courteney boats, and at last falling asleep peaceably at her moorings hard by the vast riverside railway warehouses on the outskirts of a greater New Orleans.

All this forces its way through the mind while we see the meeting boats cover half the run between them. On the Enchantress a deck-hand mounted the capstan.

"They're going to sing," hurriedly said Ramsey to Hugh. "I wish they'd sing ''Lindy Lowe' that I've heard about!"

And whether by happy chance or on some signal dropped down from him or because the chantey was a new one and the crew were glad to show it off, it was chosen. The two steamers passed close with a happy commotion throughout both and the song swelled. Then the wooded crest of the bar hid each from each, and Hugh turned to Gideon: "Now, commodore, if Miss Hayle is willing I'd like to take you both below and show you over the boat—before supper."

When their descent brought them to the boiler deck the song was yet in full swing. When, passing on down, they reached the engine room the fact was amusingly clear to many on all decks, among them the Gilmores, the Californian, and Watson, that the singers had lit on a new bearing for their lines and were singing them now in compliment to a certain two whose story was by this time known to all on board. Whether, back between the sweeping cranks and shafts of the two great engines and wheels, behind the "doctor" and the "donkey" and with Hugh and Ramsey at his elbows, the alert Gideon heard the song at all was doubtful; so deep in debate were the two men, the quiet and the loud, on dimensions and powers: length, beam, hold, stroke, diameters of cylinders and of wheels, in such noted cases as the Chevalier, the Eclipse, the J. M. White, the Natchez, Antelope, Paragon, Quakeress, and Autocrat. The three were there yet when the song's last echo died, with Island Sixty-four eastward astern, Sixty-five southward ahead, the brief twilight failing and the supper bell ringadang-dinging.

At table a far-away whistle softly roared and the Enchantress sonorously responded.

"A Hayle boat," said Ramsey to Hugh; "the Regent."

"And we're singing 'Lindy' again!" said Mrs. Gilmore.

Gideon, busy talking a few seats away, talked straight on, but a cloud on his brow showed now that he had heard the song the earlier time. Every one tried hard to listen to him and the melody with the same ears. Under the table somebody's toe had no better manners than gently to beat time.



LVIII

'LINDY LOWE

[Music: Come, smil-in' 'Lind-y Lowe,... de pooti-ess gal I know,... On de fin-ess boat dat ev-eh float, In de O-hi-o, De Mas-sis-sip-pi aw de O-hi-o.]

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, teef whiteh dan de snow, On de finess boat dat eveh float, In de O—hi—o, De Mas—sis—sip—pi aw de O—hi—o.

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to de Lou'siana sho', (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, by de Gu'f o' Mexico, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to de bayous deep an' slow, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de moss wave, to an' fro, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de bell done ring to go, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de muscadimons grow, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, befo' de whistle blow', (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de pride o' Lake St. Jo', (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, I love' you long ago, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, I'll love you mo' an' mo', (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, how kin you treat me so? (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de sweet pussimmon grow (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de steam-kyahs runs too slow, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de blue pon'-lily grow, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, O don't you tell me no! (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, I's bound to be yo' beau, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de wile white roses grow, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, de fust of all de row, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, eyes sweeteh dan de doe, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, whah de white magnonia blow', (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, an' awake up, fiddle an' bow, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, we'll a-dance de heel an' toe, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, to de tchune o' Jump, Jim Crow, (Chorus)

Come, smilin' 'Lindy Lowe, come, de pootiess gal I know, On de finess boat dat eveh float' In de O—hi—o, De Mas—sis—sip—pi aw de O—hi—o.



LIX

"CONCLUSIVELY"

Alone in the wide light of a harvest-moon that wrapped all shores in deep shadow and turned the mid-channel to silver, Hugh and Ramsey stood at the low front rail of the texas roof.

There were but few to see them, but every eye in range was aware of her and of a refined simplicity of dress adorning a figure whose pliant grace was the finishing touch to her joyous erectness. Hugh's gaze was frankly on her, and his mind on the first night he had ever seen her, when, with her hair wind-tossed in loose curls, she had stood at this spot on the Votaress and in carelessness of a whole world had sung "The Lone Starry Hours."

Equally distant from them were the pilot-house behind and above and the bell down forward on the skylight. To right and left on a thwartship line just back of them towered the chimneys softly giving out their titanic respirations. Watson, though off watch, was up at the wheel beside his partner, pretending not to see the two beneath. In other words, he was still, after eight and a half years, "in the game." The Gilmores were with him, both in body and spirit.

Out forward of the bell, below it on the main roof, one of the boat's builders, responsible for her till she should reach New Orleans, sat in the captain's chair.

"After eight years and a half," Hugh himself had gravely begun to say to Ramsey, when two men, "California" and a fellow smoker, sauntered across the skylight roof close below. Gilmore, up in the pilot-house, was annoyed.

"Our poet," he murmured to his wife, "will spill the fat into the fire yet, if we don't stop him."

But the Californian had purposely encumbered himself with this stranger to make it plain that, hover as he might, he waived all claim to her attention. What better could a man do? And now he forbore even to look her way. The abstention was as marked as any look could have been. As they passed, Hugh was silent, but Ramsey spoke, her speech a light blend of response and evasion.

"On the Votaress," she said, "the front of the texas didn't stand out forward of the chimneys, like this."

"Doesn't this make a handsomer boat," the lover asked, "seen either aboard or from the shore?"

Ramsey said yes, she had noticed the improvement from the Memphis wharf-boat. "She was a splendid sight; yes, out in the stream, just before her wheels first stopped. At least she was to any one loving boats and the river."

"Then you haven't changed?" asked Hugh, not for information but in the tone that always meant so much beneath the speech.

Her answer was merely to meet his gaze with a gentle steadfastness, each knowing that the other's mind was overcircling all the years that had divided them. Through those years they had exchanged no spoken or written word. Yet according to Watson true love finds ways, large love large ways, pure love pure ways. Sometimes love's friends really help; help find ways, or keep ways found; even make chutes and cut-offs. Gilmore, Watson, and the Vicksburg merchant happened to be Odd Fellows, and the Gilmores, to whom letter-writing was, next to their profession, their main pleasure, had been a sort of clearing-house for Friendship, Love, and Truth—and especially for social news—to all the Votaress's old coterie; Hugh, the pairs of Milliken's Bend, Vicksburg, and Carthage, the boat's family, Phyllis, Madame Hayle, even old Joy—with madame for amanuensis—and Ramsey herself. She and Hugh, had followed every step in each other's course, upheld by a simplicity of faith in friendship, love, and truth, which hardly needed to ask the one question abundantly answered by this steadfastness of eye.

Now she looked away to the moon's path on the river, and the question of change came back from her: "Have you?"

"Only to grow."

"You have grown," she said, "every way."

"And you," he replied, "every beautiful way. I have just said so to your father."

Her response came instantly: "How did that happen?"

"We made it happen."

She looked at him again. "We," of course, meant "I." Truly she had grown every beautiful way, but it was yet as wonderful as ever to stand, saying what she had said, hearing what she was hearing, eye to eye, open soul to open soul, with one who could make words—words at any rate—happen between himself and Gideon Hayle. She looked this time not alone into his eyes but on all his unhandsome countenance, and in a surviving upflare of her younger days' extravagance thought whether, among all time's heroes of the world's waters, there had ever been one too great for Hugh Courteney's face. So looking she thrilled with the belief that there was nothing such men had ever done which this one might not some day, the right day, equal or surpass.

Again she looked away and as she looked the hovering Californian murmured to his new-found confidant:

"You can't see the glory of her in this light nohow, unless you'd seen her already in the full blaze of the cabin, or of broad day, with the light in that red hair. If you had you wouldn't need even the moonlight now. You'd only need to know she was there and you'd see her without looking. I seen her in her first long dress, jest a-learning to fly and some folks showing no more poetic vision than to call her 'almost plain.' I saw the loveliness a-coming, like daybreak in the mountains. And he saw it. I saw he saw it. And now? I tell you, sir, her brow is like the snowdrift, her throat is like the swan, and her face it is the fairest—I never seen Annie Laurie, but if she's better looking or sweeter behaving—I'd rather not. Anyhow they're enough alike to be sisters. I've writ a poem on this one. Like to show—hmm? Hold on. It don't quite suit me yet but—what's your hurry? When it does, I Joe! it'll be a ripsnorter. I've worked eight year and a half on it and they say genius is jest a trick o' takin' infinitessimal pains.... No, I'm not sleepy. Reckon I'll go up to the pilot-house. So long. Pleasant dreams."

While he so spoke Ramsey had said: "Here comes another boat, down in the next bend. Or is she in the chute?"

"The chute," replied Hugh. "That's the old Antelope."

"Ah, up and running again! I know all about you and the Votaress saving her people that awful night she sank."

"Who told you?"

"Oh, a dozen, at a dozen times; but the best was Phyllis, writing to us."

"Phyllis behaved heroically that night; made up for all the past—though really she'd done that before."

"I'm glad you feel that way," murmured Ramsey and suddenly asked: "Why did you take my father to your room just now?"

"To show him the plans for another boat."

"Humph!" What crystalline honesty was in his answers, she pondered. They were as prompt as a mirror's.

"Rivals," she remarked, "don't ordinarily show plans."

"Your father and I are not ordinary rivals."

What did that mean? Her, and not mere boats' plans? She did not look at him this time. Like "California" she could see without looking. "Think I'll rejoin the Gilmores," she sighed, as certain couples came up to see the Antelope go by. She feared a recurrence of "'Lindy Lowe." On the way to the pilot-house she leisurely inquired:

"Do you think you'll ever build a finer boat than this?"

"Yes, and larger, and faster."

"Not this season?"

"No, I should hope not for many. Yet——"

"Boats' lives," she prompted, "are so uncertain."

"Yes, grandfather thinks——"

"Oh, if only he were here!" She paused to let Hugh notice that she had "were" and "was" in hand at last. Then:

"How long will that boat be?"

"Three hundred and thirty feet. She'll have ten boilers. Her cylinders will be forty-three inches, her stroke eleven feet. She'll carry eighty-five hundred bales of cotton."

"Goodness! How wide will she be?"

"In the beam fifty. Over all, at the wheelhouses, ninety. Her wheels will be forty-five feet in diameter and their buckets nineteen feet span. You still like figures, boats' figures, I hope?"

She still liked, for second choice, to make him, to herself, ridiculous; liked it even now while inwardly laughing and weeping at him for not coming to personal matters infinitely more important. "Go on," she said, "I like cabin figures. How long, wide, and high will the cabin be?"

"Two hundred and sixty-three by nineteen by sixteen."

"What'll her name be? Another e-double-s, of course?"

"No, I've just been telling your father—here comes the Antelope. I was telling him that grandfather——"

An overhead roar of reply to the signal of the approaching boat drowned all words, but Ramsey had learned on coming aboard that the grandfather was still sound though beyond four score, and her one vivid wish now was to know more not of him but of Hugh and her father. Yet she had to let Hugh hand her up the pilot-house stair, and without him rejoined the Gilmores while Watson spoke down to the man in the captain's chair as to the light-draught Antelope having come up through the chute of Island So-and-so. She was just in time to accept her share in the splendor and gayety of the two boats' meeting and passing. As the picture dissolved, Mrs. Gilmore slyly pinched Ramsey's finger while asking Watson:

"Why don't our men sing? I want some more 'Lindy!"

Had she not heard the signal for the lead? No, in the excitement she had not, though both Ramsey and "California" had, there being to them an unfailing poetry in the casting of the lead, whether by day or, as now, by the glare of a torch basket let down close to the water under the starboard freight guards. At one end of the breast-board the two ladies, at the other the actor and the Californian, looked out and down. The boat's builder had left his seat and stood with Hugh at the forward rail. From the freight guards, far below, the leadsman, unseen up here except to experienced "poetic vision," sent up a long-drawn chant telling the fathoms of depth shown on the sounding-line that flew forward from his skilled hand into the boat's moonlight shadow, plunged to the river's bed, vibrated past his feet in the glare of the pine torch, stretched aft while he chanted, and was recovered in dripping coils and hove again.

"Mark under wa-ater, twai-ai-ain."

As the notes resounded Hugh looked up to the pilots and in his quietest speaking voice repeated:

"Mark under water, twain."

But our concern here is mainly with those for whom the scene, the calls, veiled two private conversations. Three or four times the one melodious cry, following as many casts, rose from below, and each time, with all its swing and melody left out, Hugh passed it on up to the pilots. Between the strains Gilmore said softly to "California":

"My dear fellow, no. Every time we show ourselves their partisans we make heavier hauling for them. They'd tell us so, only that—don't you see?—they can't even do that. It would be infra dig." But in fact Ramsey was just then telling something much like that to his wife.

"Yes," admitted the Californian, full of a new scheme, yet always generous, "and that was a ten-strike, your wife, after supper, taking Miss Hayle away from Hugh and Gideon in such gay style. Did you see how't sort o' eased the old man's mind?"

The leadsman's cry changed and so came twice or thrice, Hugh as often repeating it to the pilots, while Ramsey and Mrs. Gilmore, though hearkening, whispered busily.

"Shoaling," commented Mrs. Gilmore to Ramsey.

"Not seriously," said the river-wise Ramsey. "Go on. What did you get out of him at last?" She had a merry sparkle.

Once more the far-below cry rose to them and was restated by Hugh without color or thrill. Ramsey well knew that so it was always sung and spoken, yet she remarked:

"Hear that absurd difference—in those two voices."

"That's the difference between him and other men, Ramsey; even between him and your father."

She liked that, though now she felt bitter toward him for not being more like ordinary mortals.

"Go on," she lightly repeated. "If he won't make words happen with me I must take him second-hand."

"You naughty girl! He'll tell you all you'll let him."

"Oh, I'll let him, all he'll tell me. What did he say?"

"He said the very best was, that under all your mantle of new charms——"

Ramsey's soft laugh interrupted. "He didn't. He never said that, my lady. He wouldn't know how. You said it."

"Well, he did say that under it all there's nothing lost of the Ramsey we began with."

"The slanderer!" They laughed together. The calls of the lead were passing unnoticed. "Mark above water, twain; mark, twain; quarter less, twain; half, twain; nine and a half; by the mark, nine; nine feet."

"The slanderer! Why, that's actionable! I'll have the law on him!" The speaker's mirth was overdone. As the leadsman sang another cry and Hugh sedately spoke it she tinkled as of old and said: "Don't get excited, captain. Keep cool."

Mrs. Gilmore sobered. "You may laugh, but I believe he's talked with your father conclusively and will to you to-night, if you'll allow it."

"Humph! you don't know that he'll come near me. Aboard his own boat, on her trial trip, he's got other fish to fry. But even if he should, don't you see how absolute the deadlock is? Oh, you must have seen it these eight years and more!—in spite of everybody's silence."

"We didn't. We don't see it even now, Gilmore and I. We don't believe Captain Hugh sees any deadlock whatever. He merely knows you think you do. You think to accept him would condemn him to death?"

"Mrs. Gilmore, I know it would. My brothers—may have broken promises but they—keep—their—threats. You know that's the fashion of all this country, from Cairo down."

"Ma-a-ark, twai-ai-ain," chanted the leadsman for his final call, and not only Hugh but an echo from the land repeated it. To many an ear, poetic ear, that echo is there yet, in all that country, from Cairo down. But that is aside. Watson and his partner threw the wheel over and the Enchantress swept round for the chute.

In the bright moonlight Hugh and the boat's builder turned back toward the solitary chair, placidly conversing. Gilmore talked on with "California." His wife and Ramsey drew back into the corner behind them.

"Your brothers," murmured Mrs. Gilmore, "threatened Hugh's life just the same before you came into the issue at all."

"Yes," said Ramsey, "and they're watching their chance yet. Julian told me so this summer and Lucian berated him for 'showing his hand.' Oh, that isn't the deadlock, by itself. The deadlock is that as long as Hugh Courteney holds off the feud will keep, but when he doesn't I come in and it won't; everything's precipitated. And so, you see?...

"Hmm! Hugh Courteney won't put himself, or me, or mom-a, where, in a fight for his life, no matter who's killed the killing would be in the family, and the killed would be ours, mom-a's—and—and mine. The twins see that. Jule says it, and, what's worse, Luce says nothing. That's why they are entirely satisfied with the deadlock.... Look."

The boat's contractor was leaving the deck. Hugh had started toward the pilot-house. But when Mrs. Gilmore looked she looked beyond him in meditation.

"I know what you're thinking," said Ramsey. "But it'll never happen. They've settled down to the ordinary term of a decent life, thank God!... Here he comes. Think he'll talk to me? Yes, he will. He'll begin where he left off." She laughed. "He's going to tell me the name of his next boat, if he ever builds another. Anything 'conclusive' in that?"

Mrs. Gilmore was grave a moment longer and then brightly said: "There might be! There may be! I can see—I can see how he—" She could not finish. Hugh had entered.

His coming broke in upon another conversation, that of Gilmore and "California."

"Old boy, no. Suppose it should work out as you plan. You leave us at Natchez; that's easy. You live there a week, a month, free with your gold and making friends—of the sort gold makes. You get into a political quarrel with the twins—nothing easier—and in a clear case of your own self-defence the two are:—

"'—Laid in one grave. Sing tooralye,' etc."

"Wouldn't that be poetic justice? and ain't I a poet?"

"Undoubtedly. Then by miracle you come off scot-free."

"Not essential. I take my chances."

"Still, you have that hope; freedom is sweet. More-over, miracle of miracles, what you did it for is never guessed. But, my dear fellow, there are two who'd never need to guess. Like us they'd know and that knowledge would sunder them forever. They'd never willingly look into each other's faces again."

"Nnn-o. No, course they wouldn't. I seen that from the jump but I sort o' hoped you'd maybe know some way to get round that; it being the only real difficulty."

"Sorry, but I don't. Odd how narrow-minded one's friends can be, but when they are—what can we do?"

"Yes, that's so.... Mr. Gilmore, you're not narrow-minded; I've got a poem——"

It was there Hugh entered. But it was there, too, that Watson made a move in his modest part of the game.

With his eyes out ahead down the chute they were entering—"If any one," he drawled, "wants to see a scandalous fine moonlight picture of this river, one they'll never forget, the best place from whence to behold it is the texas roof, down here, out for'ard o' the chimneys."

"If Captain Hugh would go with us," pensively said Mrs. Gilmore, "we'd all go." And soon the pilots were alone.

"Now," growled the younger, with his gaze down there on Ramsey, "don't that beat you? Her making California stay so's Cap'n Hugh can't pair off with her!"

"Be easy," said Watson; "that's according to Hoyle. Don't shoot till they settle.... There. Now I'll go down and take care of California. By cracky! run smooth or run rough, I believe it's going to go this time."



LX

ONCE MORE HUGH SINGS

Between that great eastward bend nearly opposite the mouth of the Arkansas, which in later years was cut off and is now, or was yesterday, Beulah Lake—between it and Ozark Island below—a white-jacket came up from the passenger deck far enough to show his head to the watchman above and warily asked a question.

"Six," was the reply. "Including me—seven."

The inquirer ran wildly down again, but the Enchantress sped on through the glorious moonlight as though he scarcely mattered. On the texas roof Mrs. Gilmore sat with "California," her husband with Watson, Hugh with Ramsey. But only the last two were out on its forward verge. Mrs. Gilmore had found it cool there and with the others had drawn back a few steps, into the pleasant warmth of the chimneys. For average passengers the evening was far gone, but not for players, pilots, Californians, or lovers—of the river.

A mile or so farther on, the white-jacket reappeared and, gliding by all others to reach his captain, said, with mincing feet and a semicircular bow, while presenting a tray of six, not seven, sherry cobblers:

"Sev'l gen'lemen's comp'ments, an' ax, will Mis' Gil'——"

"What gentlemen? Who?"

"Sev'l gen'lemen, yassuh. Dey tell me dess say, sev'l gen'lemen. Sev'l gen'lemen ax will Mis' Gilmo' have de kin'ness fo' to sing some o' dem same songs she sing night afo' las' in de ladies' cabin an' las' night up hyuh.... Yass'm, whiles dey listens f'om de b'ileh deck."

"Has my father gone to bed?" asked Ramsey.

"No'm, he up yit. He done met up wid dese sev'l gen'lemen an' find dey old frien's—callin' deyse'v's in joke Gideon' Ban'—an' he talkin' steamboats wid 'em——"

The speaker tittered as Ramsey inquiringly extended her arms out forward and crossed her wrists. "Yass'm," he said, "hin' feet on de front rail, yass'm."

It seemed but fair that Mrs. Gilmore, to meet the compliment generously, should sing at the very front of the hurricane roof, just over the forward guards of the boiler deck. But Ramsey and Hugh kept their place. Ramsey wanted to be near the sky, she explained, when songs were sung on the water by moonlight, and eagerly spoke for two or three which her friend had sung of old on the Votaress to spiritualize the "acrobatics" of the Brothers Ambrosia.

The singer's voice was rich, trained, and mature, and her repertory a survival of young days—nights—before curtains and between acts: Burns, Moore, Byron, and Mrs. Norton, alternating with "The Lavender Girl," "Rose of Lucerne," "Dandy Jim o' Caroline," and "O Poor Lucy Neal." And now she sang her best, in the belief that while she sang the pair up between her and the pilot-house were speaking conclusively. Let us see.

"Ramsey," said Hugh, and waited—ten seconds—twenty.

Well, why should he not? In eight years and a half there were ten million times twenty seconds and she had waited all of them. At length she responded and the moment she did so she thought she had spoken too promptly although all she said was, "Yes?"

"The hour's come at last," said Hugh.

"What hour?—hour to name that boat?"

"Yes, to name that boat. Only not that first. Ramsey, I've told your father all I ever wanted to tell you."

"Humph!" The response was so nearly in the manner of the earlier Ramsey, "the Ramsey he had begun with" and whom she remembered with horror, that she recognized the likeness. The further reply had been on her tongue's end, that to tell her father only that could not have taken long, or some such parrying nonsense; but now it would not come. She felt her whole nature tempted to make love's final approach steep and slippery, but again without looking she saw his face; his face of stone; his iron face with its large, quiet, formidable eyes that could burn with enterprise in great moments; a face set to all the world's realities, and eyes that offered them odds, asking none. So seeing she knew that if she answered with one least note of banter she would make herself an object of his magnanimity, than which she would almost rather fall under his scorn—if he ever stooped to scorn. Suddenly she remembered the deadlock and was smitten with the conviction that these exchanges were love's last farewell. Now it was hard to speak at all.

"What was it you told him?"

"I told him how long I'd loved you, and why."

"We both love the river so," murmured Ramsey in a voice broken by the pounding of her heart.

"Yes. I told him that, for one thing. And I told him how gladly I would have asked for you long ago had I not seen myself, as you so often saw me on the Votaress——"

"Condemned to inaction," she softly prompted; for if this was farewell a true maiden must speed the parting.

"Yes."

"By an absolute deadlock," she murmured on. "My father sees it. He knows it's one yet and must always be one."

"No, a lock but not a deadlock. It's a lock to which your brothers do not hold the key."

The pounding in her breast, which had grown better, grew worse again. "Who holds it?"

"Your father. I have just told him so. At no time would I have hesitated to ask for you if the key had been with your brothers. I would have got a settlement from them, sink or swim, alive or dead. I believe in lover's rights, Ramsey, and I'll have a lover's rights at any risk or cost that falls only on me. Those old threats—yes, I know how fiercely they are still meant—and they have always had their weight; but they've never of themselves weighed enough to stop me. I've held off and endured, waiting not for a change of heart in your brothers, but for an hour counselled, Ramsey, by my father on his dying bed."

"What hour? Hour of strongest right? strongest reason?"

"Not at all. The hour I've waited for was the one which would best enable me to meet your father on equal terms as measured by his own standards."

"Oh, I see. I believe I see."

"Yes, the hour when I should be not owner merely, but captain too, of the finest boat——"

"Dat eveh float'—" she tenderly put in.

"Yes, on this great river."

"Oh, Captain Courteney——"

"Don't Courteney or captain me now, Ramsey, whether this is beginning or end." There was a silence, and then—

"Hugh," she said, as softly as a female bird trying her mate's song, "you mustn't ask my father. You mustn't ask any one. I can't let you."

"Your father's already asked. If he consents I go ashore at Natchez, having telegraphed ahead from Vicksburg——"

"You shan't. You shan't go to my brothers. You shan't go armed and you shan't go unarmed."

"Yes, I shall. I'll go and settle with them in an hour without the least fear of violence on either side."

"Armed with nothing but words? You shan't. And armed with anything else you shan't."

"Ramsey, words are the mightiest weapon on earth. The world's one perfect man—we needn't be pious to say it—set about to conquer the human race by the sheer power of words and died rather than use any other weapon. Died victorious, as he counted victory. And the result—a poor, lame beginning of the result—is what we call Christendom."

"You shan't die victorious for me."

"No, I shall not. I talk much too vast."

"Humph! you always did." She smiled, but a moonbeam betrayed a tear on her folded hands.

"True," he admitted. "I talk too vast. I'm only claiming the power of words in small as well as large. I've no hope of martyrdom; I'm only confident of victory."

"No matter. You won't go ashore at Natchez."

"You mean your father won't consent?"

"I do. There's one thing, at the very bottom of his heart, that you've never thought of."

"I think I have."

"What is it?"

"That as the Hayle boats are all one day to be yours, and our union would unite the two fleets under the one name of Courteney, he will never allow it."

"He never will."

"Ramsey, he says he may. If we and the boats are so united the fleet will be, while grandfather lives, the Courteney fleet; but each new boat from now on will be named for a Hayle, beginning with you, or your father, or your mother, as you and they may choose. At Vicksburg, if he consents in time, we can telegraph her—we must have her—to come aboard at Natchez for the rest of the trip. Grandfather, I suppose you've been told, is now waiting for us at Vicksburg. He came up on the Antelope."

"The Antelope! How do you know?"

"By a despatch received at Memphis."

"Mmm! what a blessing is the telegraph! But, ah, Hugh"—the name was almost naturalized—"this is a mere castle in the air! My—my brothers——"

"I'll take care of them."

"You can't! You can't! Oh, Hugh, they—keep—their—threats." She caught a breath and looked at him. If he went seeking them she would go at his side! He must have read her mind, for in his majestical way he smilingly shook his head.

Mrs. Gilmore had ceased to sing and with the others had risen and turned Ramsey's way, confident that up there the conclusive word had been spoken. Ramsey called down:

"Don't stop. Sing 'My Old Kentucky Home' or that thing in which 'the river keeps rolling along' and 'the future's but a dream.' We're song hungry up here."

"Then sing to each other," was the reply. "You can do it."

"Let Captain Hugh sing," said Watson. "He's off watch."

"He says," said Ramsey, "captains don't sing on the texas roof." She moved to join the group on its way to an after stair. Watson bent his steps for the pilot-house. At the stair the actor's wife let her husband and "California" go down before her and as Ramsey and Hugh came close said covertly:

"Sing, captain. Sing as softly as you please, just for us two while the world is in dreams and sleep, won't you?"

The lover's heart was big with happiness, his solicitor had just been singing pointedly in his interest, the seclusion here was all but absolute, the quoted line was from Ramsey's song of that first night on the Votaress, and to the bright surprise of both his hearers he laid a touch on Mrs. Gilmore's arm and in a restrained voice so confidential as to reach only to the pilot-house above and to the two men at the stair's foot below began to sing.

Before half a line was out the Californian had seized both of Gilmore's shoulders. "My poem!" he gasped. "I gave it to him last night to grammatize! He's fit it to a tchune. Partner, he's the only man that's listened——"

"Sh-sh-sh! listen yourself," whispered the actor, and this is what they heard:

[Music: O come and grace my gar-den, From all the world a-part. Thou on-ly may'st the won-der see Of birds and flow'rs that in it be, For all of them are dreams of thee. My gar-den is my heart,... My gar-den is my heart.]

"If heaven might make my garden An empire wide and great, Fidelity should close it in, The joy of life bloom evergreen, And love be law and thou be queen, Might I but keep the gate.

"For where would be my garden, Dear love, from thee apart? Whose every bush and bower and tree, Its founts, perfumes, and minstrelsy And all its flowers spring all from thee, Thou sunlight of my heart."

"You say that's your poem?" murmured the actor.

"Oh, he's doctored it," stealthily admitted the Californian. "He's doctored it a lot."



LXI

WANTED, HAYLE'S TWINS

Early in the next forenoon another of the Californian's benevolent schemes threatened to miscarry.

At the settlement of Milliken's Bend there were people already at the landing, and people running to it from three directions. Yet not a hat, hand, or handkerchief did they wave until the Enchantress, in full view up toward the head of the bend, was too near to mistake their salutes for a sign to stop. Then there were wavings aplenty and cries of acclaim. By the "River News" daily telegraphed down to the New Orleans, Vicksburg, and other papers, from Louisville, Paducah, Cairo, and like points, and brought up in those papers by such boats as the Antelope, it had been known here and at every important landing below that this latest bride of the river was coming and the time of her appearance had been definitely calculated. And now behold her, a vision of delight, a winged victory, the finest apparition yet. Up in front of her bell could be seen Captain Hugh, and who was that beside him, twice his bulk, but Gideon Hayle!

"Well, well, what's going to happen next?"

No one offered an answer, though the question echoed round.

So early in the season the new wonder carried no cotton, but her lower deck showed "right smart o' freight," and wherever passengers were wont to stand stood a crowd looking so content that on the shore one lean and hungry native with his hands in his trousers to the elbows drawled sourly as his eye singled out the boiler-deck throng:

"Kin see thah breakfast inside 'em f'om hyuh."

Now they read her name in gold on the front of her pilot-house, now on its side and splendidly magnified on her wheel-house, and lastly again on the pilot-house, at its back, as she dwindled away eastward for Island One-hundred-and-three, called by Ramsey and Watson "My Wife's," and now known as Pawpaw Island.

"California" was a general disappointed of his reinforcements. The pair at Milliken's Bend having failed him, what better hope was there of the Carthaginians or even of the Vicksburg couple? Yet at Vicksburg, two hours later, he had joy. For down at the wharf-boat's very edge, liveliest of all wavers and applauders, with a "Howdy, Cap'm Hugh?" before the lines were out, and a "How you do, Miss Ramsey?" were the three pairs at once, foregathered here, they said, "to make the spree mo' spree-cious," and wild to be the first on the "sta-age plank." Close after them came Commodore Courteney, and Vicksburg faded into the north.

"Why, Mis' Gilmo'!" said the three pretty wives, sinking with a deft sweep of their flounced crinoline upon the blue-damask sofas and faintly teetering on their perfect springs, "why, my deah la-ady, yo' eight an' a hafe yeahs youngeh!— Ain't she?— She certain'y is! An' that deah Commodo' Co'teney! He's as sweet as eveh!

"But you, Miss Ramsey, oh,—well,—why,—you know,—time an' again we heard what a mahvel you'd grown to be, but—why,—lemme look at you again! Why, yo' just divi-i-ine! Law'! I'd give a thousand dollahs just fo' yo' red-gole hair. Why, it's the golden locks o' Veronese, that Cap'm Hugh's fatheh showed you,—don't you remembeh?—on the Vot'ress, an' you showed us,—in the sky. They there yet!

"An'"—the five heads drew close together—"Cap'm Hugh, oh, he ain't such a su'pri-ise; we've seen him f'om time to time. But ain't he—mmm, hmm, hmmm! An'so a-a-able! Why, Miss Ramsey,—oh, you must 'a' heard it,—they say excep' fo' yo' pa he hasn't got his equal on the riveh an' could 'a' been a captain long ago had he 'a' thought best himself. He certain'y could. But ain't this boat the splendidest thing in the wi-i-ide, wi-i-ide world? It certain'y is! It's a miracle! an' he her captain and deservin' to be!

"Mis' Gilmo',—Miss Ramsey,"—the lovely heads came together,—"the's a hund'ed pretty girls—an' rich as pretty—that ah just cra-a-azy about him. But they might as well be crazy about a stah. They certain'y might, an' they—know—why!" (Laughter.) "They certain'y do— Law'! ain't Miss Ramsey got the sa-a-ame o-o-ole la-a-afe, on'y sweeteh'n eveh? Sweeteh an' mo' ketchin'! You certain'y have. No wondeh yo' call' the Belle o' the Bends. But, all the same, yo' cruel. Yo' fame' fo' yo' cruelty!" (Laughter.) "They say he's just telegrayphed yo' ma to come aboa'd at Natchez. That's just ow Southe'n hospitality. But won't that be fi-i-ine? It certain'y will!"

The three husbands came bringing the actor, the junior pilot, the Californian, and his confidant of the evening before. Incited by Ramsey the wives fell into queries on the coming election, rejoicing that even should Lincoln be made President, and that incredible thing, a war, come on, the great river and its cities—New Orleans, Natchez, Memphis, and especially Vicksburg—would be far from the storm. While they made merry Mrs. Gilmore got Ramsey aside.

"If Captain Hugh's telegraphed, why, then, your father——"

"Oh! my father, he's roaming over the boat somewhere with Commodore Courteney! I'm going to change this hot dress for a cooler one. I'll be back before a great while."

"Let me go with you. Are you not well?"

Not well! The girl laughed gayly. But as she drew her friend out upon the guards and to her stateroom's rear door she talked with a soft earnestness all the way.

"I don't see how I could have been so blind! If he saw those things why couldn't I see them? I thought of them, over and over; but always the other things crowded them back into the dark—and there was plenty of dark. He's right, my father does hold the key, and if I'd seen things as I see them now I'd have made the twins give in, somehow, long ago. If you should see mammy Joy, or Phyllis, or both, please send them to me."

She shut herself in, dropped to the berth's side, and let the tears run wild. The nurse and the still handsome Phyllis appeared promptly, together. But they found her full of sparkle; so full that Phyllis saw under the mask; a mask she herself had worn so often in her youth under a like desperation.

"Mammy," said her mistress, "want to go somewhere with your baby, about sundown this evening?"

For explanation the old woman glanced at Phyllis, but Phyllis's eyes were on Ramsey with a light whose burning carried old Joy's memory back twenty years. "Sundown?" echoed the nurse to gain time, "yass'm, o' co'se, ef—but, missie—sundown—dat mean' Natchez. You cayn't be goin' asho' whah Cap'm Hugh dess tell Phyllis yo' ma comin' aboa'd?"

"Not ashore to stay," was the blithe reply as Phyllis aided the change of dress. "There'll be two or three of us."

"Well, o' co'se, ef you needs me. Wha' fo' you gwine?"

"To see the twins," sang Ramsey, "if we go at all."

Then Phyllis knew she was trusted, and while with a puzzled frown the nurse watched her manipulate hooks and eyes she blandly asked: "Miss Ramsey, if Cap'm Hugh give' me leave kin I go too?"

"Yes, you might ask him. Nobody's going unless he goes."

The light came to old Joy. "Law'! missie, now you a-talkin'! Now you a-talkin' wisdom! Dah's whah I's wid you, my baby. I's wid you right dah, pra-a-aise Gawd!"

All three, parting company, were happier for several hours. But the Californian's were not the only fond schemes, aboard the Enchantress, that could go to wreck.

Nor had "California" met his last disappointment even on this journey. As he and his reinforcements came out on the boiler deck with a hundred others from the midday feast the deck-hands below, for quicker unloading at Canal Street on the morrow, were shifting a lot of sacked corn from the hold to the forecastle-deck and were timing their work to a chantey. The song was innocently chosen in reference solely to the piece of river in which they chanced then to be, but all the more for its innocence it touched in that gentle knight a chord of sympathy.

"My own true love wuz lost an' found— O hahd times!— An' lost ag'in a-comin' round Hahd Times Ben'. Found an' lost, lost an' found, An' lost ag'in a-comin' round Hahd Times Ben'."[2]

So it ran, while the Enchantress turned southeast with that Lake Saint Joe of which "'Lindy" was "the pride" lying forest-hidden a few miles away on the starboard beam. The melody opened with a prolonged wail on its highest note and bore the tragic quality which so often marked the songs of slavery. Helped on by names of near-by landmarks—the Big Black River and the once perilous Grand Gulf—at the bottom of Hard Times Bend—it played on "California's" mind like summer lightning and seemed to call to his romantic spirit supernaturally. He could delay no longer to take his companions into his confidence.

By guess, he said, by inferences, and by modest inquiries he had discerned that Hugh was going ashore at Natchez to—they understood. All right, he would go, too, and ordinarily he would be enough. But the present need was not a fair fight but peace. Hence the propriety of overwhelming numbers. Wouldn't they like to take a hand?

"But he'll see the twins privately," said the invited.

"Of course, but 'though lost to sight' they'll know we're too close for them to get away from, and that's a very convincing situation to 'most any man, even twins."

"Yes, but we can't turn a feud into a fox-hunt. You don't know these things as we do."

"Don't? Why, my friends, I'm a Kentucky highlander. Might as well say I don't know the smell of whiskey because I keep sober, when, in my day, I've been so drunk I've laid on my back and felt up'ards for the ground."

However, he yielded sweetly. But it was plain to see that he would certainly, contentedly, go with Hugh alone. Indeed, only this would he have preferred—that Gideon Hayle might go instead. But one square look at the big, grim, baffled commander had told him earlier that Hugh's perilous isolation was wholly acceptable as a final test of his fitness to belong to Gideon's Band. He parted with his companions and stood at the front rail taking comfort in the thought that whoever might disappoint him the twins would not and looking down on the toiling singers in placid defiance of their lines:

"My true love's heart to mine 'uz boun'— O hahd times!— Dey broke dem bindin's comin' roun' Hahd Times Ben'. Boun' an' broke, broke an' boun', An' broke ag'in a-comin' roun' Hahd Times Ben'."

Watson's partner touched the listener's arm, who smiled and said:

"Only four hours more."

"That's all," replied the pilot. "But I've just thought of something. Suppose the twins shouldn't be in Natchez."

[Footnote 2: [Music notation]]



LXII

EUTHANASIA

A few steps aside from Hugh and his grandfather at the forward rail of the hurricane roof, in a glow of autumn twilight, the Gilmores and the three couples taken on at Vicksburg observed the Enchantress, under Watson's skill, lay her lower guards against the guards of the Natchez wharf-boat with a touch as light as a human hand.

Down on the wharf-boat, in its double door, as beautiful in her fuller years as in Votaress days, and more radiant, stood Madame Hayle. A man-servant at one elbow, a maid at the other, saw the group on the roof fondly bidding for her smiles, but except one sent earlier to the two Courteneys they were all for her husband and daughter, who, unseen from above, awaited her half-way down the main forward stairs. When the maid, however, leaned to her and spoke, her glance went aloft and her gestures were a joy even to the strangers who crowded the boat's side. Now while the stage was run out and her husband met her and gave her his arm, and white-jackets seized her effects, the man-servant answered a question softly called over to him by Ramsey, and the group overhead caught his words:

"De twins couldn' come. No, miss, 'caze dey ain't in town. No, miss, dey bofe went oveh to de Lou'siana place 'istiddy.... Yass, miss, on a bah hunt in Bayou Crocodile swamp."

Mrs. Gilmore stole a glance at Hugh, but the only sign that he had heard was a light nod to the mate below, and a like one up to Watson.

"Take in that stage," called the mate to his men. The engine bells jingled, the Enchantress backed a moment on one wheel, then went forward on both, fluttered her skirts of leaping foam, made a wide, upstream turn, headed down the river, and swept away for Natchez Island just below and for New Orleans distant a full night's run. She had hardly put the island on her larboard bow when merrily up and down the cabin and out on the boiler deck and thence down the passenger guards rang the supper bell.

"Bayou Crocodile," said a Carthaginian descending the wheel-house stair, "that's where one of the sons-in-law has his plantation, isn't it?"

"On the Black River, yes," said he of Milliken's Bend.

"Near where it comes into Red River," added Vicksburg.

Once more Hugh and Ramsey sat alone side by side under a glorious night sky, at that view-point so rarely chosen by others but so favored by her—the front of the texas roof. Down forward at the captain's station sat the two commodores and up in the pilot-house were the two pilots, the Gilmores, "California," Madame Hayle, and they of Vicksburg and the Bends.

In the moral atmosphere of this uppermost group there was a new and happy clearness easily attributable to a single potent cause—Madame Hayle. Her advent and the moon's rising had come in the same hour and with very similar effect. Every one was aware for himself, though nobody could say when any one else had been told, that while Gideon's decision was still withheld, madame, in her own sweet, absolute way, had said it would be forthcoming before the boat touched the Canal Street wharf, and that in the interval, whether Hugh and Ramsey were never to sit side by side again, or were to go side by side the rest of their days, they should have this hour this way and were free to lengthen it out till night was gone, if they wished.

It was not late in any modern sense, yet on the passenger deck no one was up but the barkeeper, two or three quartets at cards, the second clerk at work on his freight list, a white-jacket or two on watch, and Joy and Phyllis. Thus assured of seclusion the lovers communed without haste. There had been hurried questions but Hugh had answered them and Ramsey was now passive, partly in the bliss of being at his side as she had never been before and partly in a despair growing out of his confessed purpose to leave the Enchantress at Red River Landing. The grandfather had already assumed Hugh's place and cares aboard, and it was Hugh's design to make his way, by boat or horse, up to and along Black River in search of the twins.

To allay this distress Hugh's soft deep voice said:

"Suppose you were a soldier's wife. This is little to that. This is but once for all."

"Yes," murmured Ramsey, "but I'd have one advantage."

"That you'd be his wife?"

"Yes," whispered Ramsey, who could not venture the name itself, for the pure rapture of it.

"Why, you're going to be mine. As the song says: 'I will come again, my love, though a' the seas gang dry.'"

"Hugh, didn't you once say I didn't know what fear was?"

"I certainly thought it."

"Well, now I do know."

He made no reply and she sat thinking of his errand. If he should find her brothers he would meet them in the deepest wilderness. Only slaves, who could not testify against masters, would be with them, their loaded guns would be in their hands, and their blood would be heated with—She resorted again to questions in her odd cross-examining way.

"You say you think there's going to be a war?"

"I fear so."

"Humph! fear. If there should be will you fight?"

"Certainly."

"Humph! certainly. I should think—you'd hate to fight."

"I'd fight all the more furiously on that account."

"Humph!... On which side?"

"Ramsey, I don't know. I don't know till the time comes."

"Then how do you know you won't fight my brothers—now?"

"I shan't be armed."

"But if in an outburst you should snatch up some weapon?"

"I don't burst out. I don't snatch up."

"Humph! Wish I didn't."

They were rounding Point Breeze. The long reach from Fort Adams down to Red River Landing lay before them. "Hugh, did you ever have a presentiment? Of course not. I never did before. I got it a-comin' round Hard Times Bend."

"Then I can cure it—with a new verse, one our poet has made and given me. It shall be our parting word. Shall I?"

"Oh, yes, but not for parting! I don't want any parting!"

He spoke it softly:

"I dreamp I heard a joyful soun'— O hahd times!— Love once mo' foun' de last turn roun' Hahd Times Ben'. Los' an' foun', broke an' boun', Love foun' an' boun' de last turn roun' Hahd Times Ben'."

Ramsey barely waited for its end. "What's that light waving far away down yonder? It began as you did."

"It didn't know it. It's only some one on the Red River wharf-boat, wanting us to land," said Hugh, and before his last word came the Enchantress roared her assent to the signal. But Ramsey had spoken again:

"What's this, right here?" She sprang up and gazed out on the water a scant mile ahead. There, directly in the steamer's course and just out of the moon's track, another faint light waved, so close to the water as to be reflected in it. The moment the whistle broke out it ceased to swing and when the whistle ceased the engines had stopped.

"What is it?" she asked again as Hugh stood by her looking out ahead with eyes better trained to night use than hers.

"A skiff," he replied, "with some message."

She could see only that Watson had put the light on their starboard bow. It seemed to drift toward them but she knew that the movement was the steamer's, and now the light was so close as to show the negro who held it. He stood poised to throw aboard a billet of wood with a note attached. And now he cast it. The lower guards were out of Ramsey's line of sight but a cry of disappointment told her the stick had fallen short and would be lost under the great wheel, which at that moment, with its fellow, "went ahead." But as the Enchantress passed the skiff its occupant called out a hurried statement to the mate, on the forecastle, and as the skiff and its light swept astern the mate repeated the word to the commodores.

"Man at Red River Landing accidentally shot. Must be got to the city quick or he can't live."

The commodores, and then the lovers, resumed their seats.

"Poor man," murmured Ramsey, "poor man! he's got his trouble without going in chase of it."

"If he'd gone in chase of it," rejoined Hugh, "he might never have met it."

The Enchantress swung more directly toward the dim lights of the wharf-boat and at top speed ruffled through a freshening air with the goal but a few miles away. Yet the lovers sat silent. Once parted they would think of many a word they should have spoken while they could, but now none seemed large enough to break such silence with. To be silent and best content with silence was one of the most special and blissful of lovers' rights.

Presently a glow rose from the forecastle, reddening the white jack-staff up to its black night-hawk. The torch baskets were being lighted. Hugh stirred to go but Ramsey laid her touch on his wrist and he stayed.

She spoke. "Mustn't you wait near your grandfather till you see who it is that's coming aboard?"

"I can. I may as well."

The Enchantress, in mid-river, began to "round to" in order to land bow up-stream. When she came round, the half dozen men on the wharf-boat were close at hand in the glare of her torches, eye to eye with those on the forecastle, but prevented by the light itself from seeing those on the upper decks.

Ramsey sprang to her feet with lips apart to cry out to her mother up behind her, to Gideon down before, to Hugh at her side, but all these saw and knew. A face in the centre of the torchlight and of the wharf-boat group was Julian's bearing the mute intelligence that the writhing man on a rude stretcher borne by two negroes was his brother. The lovers parted without a word, but in a moment were near each other again as Hugh joined the commodores while Ramsey and her mother crouched at the roof's forward rail to see the wounded man brought across the stage.

"In my room!" pleaded madame to both Courteneys at once, and the elder assented as Hugh hurried below with the three Hayles following.

It was heart-rending work getting the sufferer into the berth while he poured out moanings of agony mingled with frantic accusations of his bearers, railings against God and all his laws, and unspoken recognitions of mother and sister. Ramsey, seeing his eye fall on Phyllis and remain there staring, and knowing from old Joy that he had grown enough like his uncle Dan to have been his twin, suffered for her as well as him.

"Who are you?" he cried, still staring. "Where am I?"

The maid did not reply, but her unfaltering gaze met his as if it neither could nor would do otherwise. Ramsey intuitively followed the play of her mind. To look again on Gideon Hayle had already recalled emotions she had striven for half a lifetime to put away, and now they kept her eyes set on this tortured yet unrelenting advocate of all the wrongs from which those emotions sprang.

He looked to his mother. "Great God! mother, is this the new Courteney boat? Well, if this isn't hell's finishing touch! Jule! Where's Jule? Go, get me Jule!"

Phyllis turned to go but—"No," he cried with a light of sudden purpose in his face, "you stay. Everybody else go! And send me Jule. Don't send a doctor, I'm the doctor myself. Get out, all of you, go! This isn't my death-bed. God! I wish it was, for I'm a cripple for life and will never walk again—leave! go! and send me Jule!"

Guided by a cabin-boy to Hugh's room, Ramsey found Julian confronting his father, "California," and the Gilmores. Hugh had led them there for privacy and stood close at one side. Julian seemed to be suffering a shock scarcely less than his brother's though it made a wholly different outward show. His face wore an appalled look, his voice was below its accustomed pitch, and his words, words which could not have been premeditated, seemed studiously fit and precise.

"Fortunately," he had been saying before Ramsey appeared, "he never"—meaning his brother—"goes into the country without his drugs and instruments—we have them with us yet—and he could tell me what to do and I did it, or he would have died right there in the swamp."

"But you don't say how the accursed thing happened," said Gideon as Ramsey entered hardly aware that she was pausing at Hugh's side. The brother turned and stared on the two.