Her smile bewitched them; she went aboard her boat, pulled over into the main current, and floated away in the sunset—her favourite river hour.

After hours of argument, debate, doubts, they, too, pulled out and floated past Fort Pillow.



CHAPTER XXVI

Parson Rasba piled the books on the crap table in his cabin and stood them in rows with their lettered backs up. He read their titles, which were fascinating: "Arabian Nights," "Representative Men," "Plutarch's Lives," "Modern Painters," "Romany Rye"—a name that made him shudder, for it meant some terrible kind of whiskey to his mind—"Lavengro," a foreign thing, "Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases," "The Stem Dictionary," "Working Principles of Rhetoric"—he wondered what rhetoric meant—"The Fur Buyers' Guide," "Stones of Venice," "The French Revolution," "Sartor Resartus," "Poe's Works," "Balzac's Tales," and scores of other titles.

All at once the Mississippi had brought down to him these treasures and a fair woman with blue eyes and a smile of understanding and sympathy, who had handed them to him, saying:

"I want to do something for your mission boat; will you let me?"

No fairyland, no enchantment, no translation from poverty and sorrow to a realm of wealth and happiness could have caught the soul of the Prophet Rasba as this revelation of unimagined, undreamed-of riches as he plucked the fruits of learning and enjoyed their luxuries. He had descended in his humility to the last, least task for which he felt himself worthy. He had humbly been grateful for even that one thing left for him to do: find Jock Drones for his mother.

He had found Jock, and there had been no wrestling with an obdurate spirit to send him back home, like a man, to face the law and accept the penalty. There had been nothing to it. Jock had seen the light instantly, and with relief. His partner had also turned back after a decade of doubt and misery, to live a man's part "back home." The two of them had handed him a floating Bethel, turning their gambling hell over to him as though it were a night's lodging, or a snack, or a handful of hickory nuts. The temple of his fathers had been no better for its purpose than this beautiful, floating boat.

Then a woman had come floating down, a beautiful strange woman whose voice had clutched at his heart, whose smile had deprived him of reason, whose eyes had searched his soul. With tears on her lashes she had flung to him that treasure-store of learning, and gone on her way, leaving him strength and consolation.

He left his treasure and went out to look at the river. Everybody leaves everything to look at the river! There is nothing in the world that will prevent it. He saw, in the bright morning, that Prebol had raised his curtain, and was looking at the river, too, though the effort must have caused excruciating pain in his wounded shoulder. Day was growing; from end to end of that vast, flowing sheet of water thousands upon thousands of old river people were taking a look at the Mississippi.

Rasba carried a good broth over to Prebol for breakfast, and then returned to his cabin, having made Prebol comfortable and put a dozen of the wonderful books within his reach. Then the River Prophet sat down to read his treasures, any and all of them, his lap piled up, three or four books in one hand and trying to turn the pages of another in his other hand by unskilful manipulation of his thumb. He was literally starving for the contents of those books.

He was afraid that his treasure would escape from him; he kept glancing from his printed page to the serried ranks on the crap table, and his hands unconsciously felt around to make sure that the weight on his lap and in his grasp was substantial and real, and not a dream or vision of delight.

He forgot to eat; he forgot that he had not slept; he sat oblivious of time and river, the past or the future; he grappled with pages of print, with broadsides of pictures, with new and thrilling words, with sentences like hammer blows, with paragraphs that marched like music, with thoughts that had the gay abandon of a bird in song. And the things he learned!

When night fell he was dismayed by his weariness, and could not understand it. For a little while he ransacked his dulled wits to find the explanation, and when he had fixed Prebol for the night, with medicine, water, and a lamp handy to matches, he told the patient:

"Seems like the gimp's kind of took out of me. My eyes are sore, an' I doubt am I quite well."

"Likely yo' didn't sleep well," Prebol suggested. "A man cayn't sleep days if he ain't used to hit."

"Sleep days?" Rasba looked wildly about him.

"Sho! When did I git to sleep, why, I ain't slept—I——Lawse!"

Prebol laughed aloud.

"Yo' see, Parson, yo' all cayn't set up all night with a pretty gal an' not sleep hit off. Yo' shore'll git tired, sportin' aroun'."

"Sho!" Rasba snapped, and then a smile broke across his countenance. He cried out with laughter, and admitted: "Hit's seo, Prebol! I neveh set up with a gal befo' I come down the riveh. Lawse! I plumb forgot."

"I don't wonder," Prebol replied, gravely. "She'd make any man forget. She sung me to sleep, an' I slept like I neveh slept befo'."

Rasba went on board his boat and, after a light supper, turned in. For a minute he saw in retrospect the most wonderful day in his life, a day which a kindly Providence had drawn through thirty or forty hours of unforgettable exaltation. Then he settled into the blank, deep sleep of a soul at peace and at rest.

When in the full tide of the sunshine he awakened, he went about his menial tasks, attending Prebol, cleaning out the boats, shaking up the beds, hanging the bedclothes to air in the sun, and getting breakfast. On Prebol's suggestion he moved the fleet of boats out into the eddy, for the river was falling and they might ground. He went over to Caruthersville and bought some supplies, brought Doctor Grell over to examine the patient to make sure all was well, killed several squirrels and three ducks back in the brakes, and, all the while, thought what duties he should enter upon.

Doctor Grell advised that Prebol go down to Memphis, to the hospital, so as to have an X-ray examination, and any special treatment which might be necessary. The wound was healing nicely, but it would be better to make sure.

Rasba took counsel of Prebol. The river man knew the needs of the occasion, and he agreed that he had better drop down to Memphis or Mendova, preferring the latter place, for he knew people there. He told Rasba to line the two small shanty-boats beside the big mission boat, and fend them off with wood chunks. The skiffs could float on lines alongside or at the stern. The power boat could tow the fleet out into the current, and hold it off sandbars or flank the bends.

Rasba did as he was bid, and lashed the boats together with mooring lines, pin-head to towing bits, and side to side. Then he floated the boats all on one anchor line, and ran the launch up to the bow. He hoisted in the anchor, rowed in a skiff out to the motorboat, and swung wide in the eddy to run out to the river current. There was a good deal of work to the task, and it was afternoon before the fleet reached the main stream.

Then Rasba cast off his tow lines, ran the launch back to the fleet, and made it fast to the port bow of the big boat, so that it was part of the fleet, with its power available to shove ahead or astern. A big oar on the mission boat's bow and another one out from Prebol's boat insured a short turn if it should be necessary to swing the boats around either way.

Rasba carried Prebol on his cot up to the bow of the big boat, and put him down where he could help watch the river, and they cast off. Prebol knew the bends and reaches, and named most of the landings; they gossiped about the people and the places. Prebol told how river rats sometimes stole hogs or cattle for food, and Rasba learned for the first time of organized piracy, of river men who were banded together for stealing what they could, raiding river towns, attacking "sports," tripping the river, and even more desperate enterprises.

While he talked, Prebol slyly watched his listener and thought for a long time that Rasba was merely dumbfounded by the atrocities, but at last the Prophet grinned:

"An' yo's a riveh rat. Ho law!"

"Why, I didn't say——" Prebol began, but his words faltered.

"Yo' know right smart about such things," Rasba reminded him. "I 'low hit were about time somebody shot yo' easy, so's to give yo' repentance a chance to catch up with yo' wickedness. Don't yo'?"

Prebol glared at the accusation, but Rasba pretended not to notice.

"Yo' see, Prebol, this world is jes' the hounds a-chasin' the rabbits, er the rabbits a-gittin' out the way. The good that's into a man keeps a-runnin', to git shut of the sin that's in him, an' theh's a heap of wrestlin' when one an' tother catches holt an' fights."

"Hit's seo!" Prebol admitted, reluctantly. He didn't have much use for religious arguments. "I wisht yo'd read them books to me, Parson. I ain't neveh had much eddycation. I'll watch the riveh, an' warn ye, 'gin we make the crossin's."

Nothing suited them better. Rasba read aloud, stabbing each word with his finger while he sought the range and rhythm of the sentences, and, as they happened to strike a book of fables, their minds could grasp the stories and the morals at least sufficiently to entertain and hold their attention.

Prebol said, warningly, after a time:

"Betteh hit that sweep a lick, Parson, she's a-swingin' in onto that bar p'int."

A few leisurely strokes, the boats drifted away into deep water, and Rasba expressed his admiration.

"Sho, Prebol! Yo' seen that bar a mile up. We'd run down onto hit."

"Yas, suh," the wounded man grinned. "Three-four licks on the oars up theh, and down yeah yo' save pullin' yo' livin' daylights out, to keep from goin' onto a sandbar or into a dryin'-up chute."

"How's that?" Rasba cocked his ear. "Say hit oveh—slow!"

"Why, if yo's into the set of the current up theh, hit ain't strong; yo' jes' give two-three licks an' yo' send out clear. Down theh on the bar she draws yo' right into shallow water, an' yo' hang up."

Rasba looked up the river; he looked down at the nearing sandbar, and as they passed the rippling head in safety he turned a grave face toward the pilot.

"Up theh, theh wasn't much suck to hit, but down yeah, afteh yo've drawed into the current, theh's a strong drag an' bad shoals?"

"Jes' so!"

"Hit's easy to git shut of sin, away long in the beginnin'," Rasba bit his words out, "but when yo' git a long ways down into hit—Ho law!"

Prebol started, caught by surprise. Then both laughed together. They could understand each other better and if Prebol felt himself being drawn in spite of his own reluctance by a new current in his life, Rasba did not fail to gratify the river man's pride by turning always to him for advice about the river, its currents and its jeopardies.

"I've tripped down with all kinds," Prebol grinned as he spoke, "but this yeah's the firstest time I eveh did get to pilot a mission boat."

"If you take it through in safety, do yo' reckon God will forget?" Rasba asked, and Prebol's jaw dropped. He didn't want to be reformed; he had no use for religion. He was very well satisfied with his own way of living. He objected to being prayed over and the good of his soul inquired into—but this Parson Rasba was making the idea interesting.

They anchored for the night in the eddy at the head of Needham's Cut-Off Bar, and Prebol was soon asleep, but Rasba sat under the big lamp and read. He could read with continuity now; dread that the dream would vanish no longer afflicted him. He could read a book without having more than two or three other books in his lap.

Sometimes it was almost as though Nelia were speaking the very words he read; sometimes he seemed to catch her frown of disapproval. The books, more precious than any other treasure could have been, seemed living things because she had owned them, because her pencil had marked them, and because she had given them all to his service, to fill the barren and hungry places in the long-empty halls of his mind.

He would stop his reading to think, and thinking, he would take up a book to discover better how to think. He found that his reading and thinking worked together for his own information.

He was musing, his mind enjoying the novelty of so many different images and ideas and facts, when something trickled among his senses and stirred his consciousness into alert expectancy. For a little he was curious, and then touched by dismay, for it was music which had roused him—music out of the black river night. People about to die sometimes hear music, and Parson Rasba unconsciously braced himself for the shock.

It grew louder, however, more distinct, and the sound was too gay and lively to fit in with his dreams of a heavenly choir. He caught the shout of a human voice and he knew that dancers were somewhere, perhaps dancers damned to eternal mirth. He went out on the deck and closed the door on the light behind him; at first he could see nothing but black night. A little later he discovered boats coming down the river, eight or nine gleaming windows, and a swinging light hung on a flag staff or shanty-boat mast.

As they drew nearer, someone shouted across the night:

"Goo-o-o-d wa-a-a-ter thar?"

"Ya-s-su-uh!" Rasba called back.

"Where'll we come in?"

"Anywhere's b'low me fo' a hundred yards!"

"Thank-e-e!"

Three or four sweeps began to beat the water, and a whole fleet of shanty-boats drifted in slowly. They began to turn like a wheel as part of them ran into the eddy while the current carried the others down, but old river men were at the sweeps, and one of them called the orders:

"Raunch 'er, boys! Raunch 'er! Raunchin's what she needs!"

They floated out of the current into the slow reverse eddy, and coming up close to Rasba's fleet, talked back and forth with him till a gleam of light through a window struck him clearly out of the dark.

"Hue-e-e!" a shrill woman's voice laughed. "Hit's Rasba, the Riveh Prophet Rasba! Did yo' all git to catch Nelia Crele, Parson?"

"Did I git to catch Missy Crele!" he repeated, dazed.

"When yo' drapped out'n Wolf Island Chute, Parson, that night she pulled out alone?"

"No'm; I lost her down by the Sucks, but she drapped in by Caruthersville an' give me books an' books—all fo' my mission boat!"

"That big boat yourn?"

"Yeh."

"Where all was hit built?"

"I don' remembeh, but Buck done give hit to me, him an' Jock Drones."

"Hi-i-i! Yo' all found the man yo' come a-lookin' fo'. Ho law!"

"Hit's the Riveh Prophet," someone replied to a hail from within, the dance ending.

A crowd came tumbling out onto the deck of the big boat of the dance hall, everyone talking, laughing, catching their breaths.

"Hi-i! Likely he'll preach to-morrow," a woman cried. "To-morrow's Sunday."

"Sunday?" Rasba gasped. "Sunday—I plumb lost track of the days."

"You'll preach, won't yo', Parson? I yain't hearn a sermon in a hell of a while," a man jeered, facetiously.

"Suttingly. An' when hit's through, yo'll think of hell jes' as long," Rasba retorted, with asperity, and his wit turned the laugh into a cheer.

The fleet anchored a hundred yards up the eddy, and Rasba heard a woman say it was after midnight and she'd be blanked if she ever did or would dance on Sunday. The dance broke up, the noise of voices lessened, one by one the lights went out, and the eddy was still again. But the feeling of loneliness was changed.

"Lord God, what'll I preach to them about?" Rasba whispered. "I neveh 'lowed I'd be called to preach ag'in. Lawse! Lawse! What'll I say?"



CHAPTER XXVII

Carline ascended into the world again. It was a painful ascent, and when he looked around him, he recognized the interior of his motorboat cabin, heard and felt the throbbing of his motor, and discovered aches and pains that made his extremities tingle. He sat up, but the blackness that seemed to rise around him caused him to fall hastily back upon the stateroom bunk.

He remembered his discovery of his own firearms on the shanty-boat, and fear assailed him. He remembered his folly in crying out that those were his guns. He might have known he had fallen among thieves. He cursed himself, and dread of what might yet follow his indiscretion made him whimper with terror. A most disgusting odour of whiskey was in his nostrils, and his throat was like a corrugated iron pipe partly filled with soot.

The door of the tiny stateroom was closed, but the two ports were open to let the air in. It occurred to him that he might be a captive, and would be held for ransom. Perhaps the pirates would bleed him for $50,000; perhaps they would take all his fortune! He began to cry and sob. They might cut his throat, and not give him any chance of escape. He had heard of men having had their throats cut down the river.

He tried to sit up again, and succeeded without undue faintness. He could not wait, but must know his fate immediately. He found the door was unlocked, and when he slipped out into the cabin, he found that there was only one man on board, the steersman, who was sitting in the engine pit, and steering with the rail wheel instead of the bow-cabin one.

He peered out, and found that it was Terabon, who discovered him and hailed him, cheerily:

"How are you feeling?"

"Tough—my head!"

"You're lucky to be alive!" Terabon said. "You got in with a crew of river pirates, but they let me have you. Did they leave you anything?"

"Leave me anything!" Carline repeated, feeling in his pockets. "I've got my watch, and here's——"

He opened up his change pocketbook. There were six or seven dollars in change and two or three wadded bills. When he looked for his main supply, however, there was a difference. The money was all gone. He was stripped to the last dollar in his money belt and of his hidden resources.

"They did me!" he choked. "They got all I had!"

"They didn't kill you," Terabon said. "You're lucky. How did they bang you and knock you out?"

"Why, I found they had my guns on board——"

"And you accused them?"

"No! I just said they were mine, I was surprised!"

"Then?"

"My light went out."

"When did they get your guns?"

"I woke up, up there, and you were gone. My guns and pocket money were gone, too. I thought——"

"You thought I'd robbed you?"

"Ye——Well, I didn't know!"

"This is a devil of a river, old man!" said Terabon. "I guess you travelled with the real thing out of New Madrid——"

"Doss, Renald Doss. He said he was a sportsman——"

"Oh, he is, all right, he's a familiar type here on the river. He's the kind of a sport who hunts men, Up-the-Bankers and game of that kind. He's a very successful hunter, too——"

"He said we'd hunt wild geese. We went up Obion River, and had lots of fun, and he said he'd help—he'd help——"

"Find your wife?"

"Yes, sir."

Carline was abject. Terabon, however, was caught wordless. This man was the husband of the woman for whose sake he had ventured among the desperate river rats, and now he realized that he had succeeded in the task she had set him. Looking back, he was surprised at the ease of its accomplishment, but he was under no illusions regarding the jeopardy he had run. He had trusted to his aloofness, his place as a newspaper man, and his frankness, to rescue Carline, and he had brought him away.

"You're all righ now," Terabon suggested. "I guess you've had your lesson."

"A whole book full of them!" Carline cried. "I owe you something—an apology, and my thanks! Where are we going?"

"I was taking you down to a Memphis hospital, or to Mendova——"

"I don't need any hospital. I'm broke; I must get some money. We'll go to Mendova. I know some people there. I've heard it was a great old town, too! I always wanted to see it."

Terabon looked at him; Carline had learned nothing. For a minute remorse and comprehension had flickered in his mind, now he looked ahead to a good time in Mendova, to sight-seeing, sporting around, genial friends, and all the rest. Argument would do no good, and Terabon retreated from his position as friend and helper to that of an observer and a recorder of facts. Whatever pity he might feel, he could not help but perceive that there was no use trying to help fools.

It was just dusk when they ran into Mendova. The city lights sparkled as they turned in the eddy and ran up to the shanty-boat town. They dropped an anchor into the deep water and held the boat off the bank by the stern while they ran a line up to a six-inch willow to keep the bow to the bank. The springy, ten-foot gangplank bridged the gap to the shore.

More than thirty shanty-boats and gasolene cruisers were moored along that bank, and from nearly every one peered sharp eyes, taking a look at the newcomers.

"Hello, Terabon!" someone hailed, and the newspaper man turned, surprised. One never does get over that feeling of astonishment when, fifteen hundred miles or so from home, a familiar voice calls one's name in greeting.

"Hello!" Terabon replied, heartily, and then shook hands with a market hunter he had met for an hour's gossip in the eddy at St. Louis. "Any luck, Bill? How's Frank?"

"Averaging fine," was the answer. "Frank's up town. Going clear down after all, eh?"

"Probably."

"Any birds on Yankee Bar?"

"I saw some geese there—hunters stopped in, too. How is the flight?"

"We're near the tail of it; mostly they've all gone down. We're going to drive for it, and put out our decoys down around Big Island and below."

"Then I'll likely see you down there."

"Sure thing; here's Frank."

Terabon shook hands with the two, introduced Carline, and then the hunters cast off and steered away down the stream. They had come more than a thousand miles with the migrating ducks and geese, intercepting them at resting or feeding places. That touch and go impressed Terabon as much as anything he had ever experienced.

He went up town with Carline, who found a cotton broker, a timber merchant, and others who knew him. It was easy to draw a check, have it cashed, and Carline once more had ready money. Nothing would do but they must go around to Palura's to see Mendova's great attraction for travellers.

Palura supplied entertainment and excitement for the whole community, and this happened to be one of his nights of special effort. Personally, Palura was in a temper. Captain Dalkard, of the Mendova Police, had been caught between the Citizens' Committee and Palura's frequenters. There were 100 citizens in the committee, and Palura's frequenters were unnamed, but familiar enough in local affairs.

The cotton broker thought it was a good joke, and he explained the whole situation to Terabon and Carline for their entertainment.

"Dalkard called in Policeman Laddam and told him to stand in front of Palura's, and tell people to watch out. You see, there's been a lot of complaints about people being short changed, having their pockets picked, and getting doped there, and some people think it doesn't do the town any good. Some think we got to have Palura's for the sake of the town's business. I'm neutral, but I like to watch the fun. We'll go down there and look in to-night."

They had dinner, and about 9 o'clock they went around to Palura's. It was an old market building made over into a pleasure resort, and it filled 300 feet front on Jimpson Street and 160 feet on the flanking side streets. A bright electric sign covered the front with a flare of yellow lights and there was one entrance, under the sign.

As Terabon, Carline, and the cotton broker came along, they saw a tall, broad-shouldered, smooth-shaven policeman in uniform standing where the lights showed him up.

"Watch your pocketbooks!" the policeman called softly to the patrons. "Watch your change; pickpockets, short-changers, and card-stackers work the unwary here! Keep sober—look out for knock-out drops!"

He said it over and over again, in a purring, jeering tone, and Terabon noticed that he was poised and tense. In the shadows on both sides of the policeman Terabon detected figures lurking and he was thrilled by the evident fact that one brave policeman had been sent alone into that deadly peril to confront a desperate gang of crooks, and that the lone policeman gloried to be there.

The cotton broker, neutral that he was, whispered as they disregarded the warnings: "Laddam cleaned up Front Street in six months; the mob has all come up here, and this is their last stand. It'll hurt business if they close this joint up, because the town'll be dead, but I wish Palura'd kind of ease down a bit. He's getting rough."

Little hallways and corridors led into dark recesses on either side of the building, and faint lights of different colours showed the way to certain things. Terabon saw a wonderfully beautiful woman, in furs, with sparkling diamonds, and of inimitable grace waiting in a little half-curtained cubby hole; he heard a man ask for "Pete," and caught the word "game" twice. The sounds were muffled, and a sense of repression and expectancy permeated the whole establishment.

They entered a reception room, with little tables around the sides, music blaring and blatant, a wide dancing floor, and a scurrying throng. All kinds were there: spectators who were sight-seeing; participants who were sporting around; men, women, and scoundrels; thugs and their prospective victims; people of supposed allurement; and sports of insipid, silly pose and tricked-up conspicuousness.

Terabon's gaze swept the throng. Noise and merriment were increasing. Liquor was working on the patrons. The life of Mendova was stirring to blaring music. The big hall was bare, rough, and gaunt. Dusty flags and cobwebs dangled from the rafters and hog-chain braces. A few hard, white lights cast a blinding glare straight down on the heads of the dancers and drinkers and onlookers.

Business was brisk, and shouts of "Want the waiter!" indicated the insistence with which trade was encouraged and even insisted upon. No sooner had Terabon and his companions seated themselves than a burly flat-face with a stained white apron came and inflicted his determined gaze upon them. He sniffed when Terabon ordered plain soda.

"We got a man's drink."

"I'm on the water wagon for awhile," Terabon smiled, and the waiter nodded, sympathetically. A tip of a quarter mollified his air of surly expectancy completely, and as he put the glasses down he said:

"The Boss is sick the way he's bein' treated. They ain't goin' to git away wit' stickin' a bull in front of his door like he was a crook."

Terabon heard a woman at a near-by table making her protest against the policeman out in front. No other topic was more than mentioned, and the buzz and burr of voices vied with the sound of the band till it ended. Then there was a hush.

"Palura!" a whisper rippled in all directions.

Terabon saw a man about 5 feet 10 inches tall, compactly built, square shouldered, and just a trifle pursy at the waist line, approaching along the dancing floor. He was light on his small feet, his shoulders worked with feline grace, but his face was a face as hard as limestone and of about the same colour—bluish gray. His eyes were the colour of ice, with a greenish tinge. Smooth-shaven cheeks, close-cropped hair, wing-like ears, and a little round head were details of a figure that might have been heroic—for his jaw was square, his nose large, and his forehead straight and broad.

Everyone knew he was going out to throw the policeman, Laddam, into the street. The policeman had not hurt business a pennyworth as yet, but Palura felt the insult. Palura knew the consequences of failing to meet the challenge.

"Give 'im hell!" someone called.

Palura turned and nodded, and a little yelping cheer went up, which ceased instantly. Terabon, observing details, saw that Palura's coat sagged on the near side—in the shape of an automatic pistol. He saw, too, that the man's left sleeve sagged round and hard—a slingshot or black-jack.

There was no delay; Palura went straight through to his purpose. He disappeared in the dark and narrow entrance way and not a sound was audible except the scuffling of feet.

"Palura's killed four men," the cotton broker whispered to Terabon, under his breath.

What seemed an age passed. The lights flickered. Terabon looked about in alarm lest that gang——

A crash outside brought all to their feet, and the whole crowd fell back against the walls. Out of the corridor surged a mass of men, and among them stalked a stalwart giant of a man draped with the remnants of a policeman's uniform. He had in his right hand a club which he was swinging about him, and every six feet a man dropped upon the floor.

Terabon saw Palura writhing, twisting, and working his way among the fighting mass. He heard a sharp bark:

"Back, boys!"

Four or five men stumbled back and two rolled out of the way of the feet of the policeman. It flashed to Terabon what had been done. They had succeeded in getting the policeman into the huge den of vice, where he could not legally be without a warrant, where Palura could kill him and escape once more on the specious plea of self-defence. Terabon saw the grin of perfect hate on Palura's face as both his hands came up with automatics in them—a two-handed gunman with his prey.

This would teach the policemen of Mendova to mind their own business! Suddenly Policeman Laddam threw his night stick backhanded at the infamous scoundrel, and Palura dodged, but not quite quickly nor quite far enough. The club whacked noisily against his right elbow and Palura uttered a cry of pain as one pistol fell to the floor.

Then Laddam snatched out his own automatic, a 45-calibre gun, three pounds or more in weight, and began to shoot, calmly, deliberately, and with the artistic appreciation of doing a good job thoroughly.

His first bullet drove Palura straight up, erect; his next carried the bully back three steps; his next whirled him around in a sagging spiral, and the fourth dropped the dive keeper like a bag of loose potatoes.

Laddam looked around curiously. He had never been there before. Lined up on all sides of him were the waiters, bouncers, men of prey, their faces ghastly, and three or four of them sick. The silent throng around the walls stared at the scene from the partial shadows; no one seemed even to be breathing. Then Palura made a horrible gulping sound, and writhed as he gave up his last gasp of life.

"Now then!" Laddam looked about him, and his voice was the low roar of a man at his kill. "You men pick them up, pack them outside there, and up to headquarters. March!"

As one man, the men who had been Palura's marched. They gathered up the remains of Palura and the men with broken skulls, and carried them out into the street. The crowd followed, men and women both. But outside, the hundreds scurried away in all directions, men afraid and women choking with horror. Terabon's friend the cotton broker fled with the rest, Carline disappeared, but Terabon went to headquarters, writing in his pocket notebook the details of this rare and wonderful tragedy.

Policeman Laddam had single-handed charged and captured the last citadel of Mendova vice, and the other policemen, when they looked at him, wore expressions of wonder and bewilderment. They knew the Committee of 100 would make him their next chief and a man under whom it would be a credit to be a cop.

Terabon, just before dawn, returned toward Mousa Slough. As he did so, from a dull corner a whisper greeted him:

"Say, Terabon, is it straight, Palura killed up?"

"Sure thing!"

"Then Mendova's sure gone to hell!" Hilt Despard the river pirate cried. "Say, Terabon, there's a lady down by the slough wants to get to talk to you."

"Who——?"

"She just dropped in to-night, Nelia Crele! She's into her boat down at the head of the sandbar, facing the switch willows. There's a little gasolene sternwheeler next below her boat."

"She's dropped in? All right, boys, much obliged!"

They separated.

But when Terabon searched along the slough for Nelia's boat he did not find it, and to his amazed anger he found that the gasolene boat in which he had arrived was also gone, as well as his own skiff and all his outfit.

"Darn this river!" he choked. "But that's a great story I sent of the killing of Palura!"



CHAPTER XXVIII

Nelia Crele had laughed in her heart at Elijah Rasba as he sat there listening to her reading. She knew what she was doing to the mountain parson! She played with his feelings, touched strings of his heart that had never been touched before, teased his eyes with a picture of feminine grace, stirred his mind with the sense of a woman who was bright and who knew so much that he had never known. At the same time, there was no malice in it—just the delight in making a strong man discover a strength beyond his own, and in humbling a masculine pride by the sheer superiority of a woman who had neglected no opportunity to satisfy a hunger to know.

She knew the power of a single impression and a clear, quick getaway. She left him dazed by the fortune which heaped upon him literary classics in a dozen forms—fiction, essays, history, poetry, short stories, criticism, fable, and the like; she laughed at her own quick liking for the serious-minded, self-deprecatory, old-young man whose big innocent eyes displayed a soul enamoured by the spirited intelligence of an experienced and rather disillusioned young woman who had fled from him partly because she did know what a sting it would give him.

So with light heart and singing tongue she floated away on the river, not without a qualm at leaving those books with Rasba; she loved them too much, but the sacrifice was so necessary—for his work! The river needed him as a missionary. He could help ease the way of the old sinners, and perhaps by and by he would reform her, and paint her again with goodness where she was weather-beaten.

It is easy to go wrong on the Mississippi—just as easy, or easier, than elsewhere in the world. The student of astronomy, gazing into the vast spaces of the skies, feels his own insignificance increasing, while the magnitude of the constellations grows upon him. What can it matter what such a trifling thing, such a mere atom, as himself does when he is to the worlds of less size than the smallest of living organisms in a drop of water?

Nelia Crele looked around as she left the eddy and saw that her houseboat was but a trifle upon a surface containing hundreds of square miles. A human being opposite her on the bank was less in proportion than a fly on the cabin window pane. Then what could it matter what she did? Why shouldn't she be reckless, abandoned, and live in the gaiety of ages?

She had read thousands of pages of all kinds with no guide posts or moral landmarks. A picture of dangerous delights had come into her imagination. Having read and understood so much, she had not failed to discover the inevitable Nemesis on the trail of wrongdoing, as well as the inevitableness of reward for steadfastness in virtues—but she wondered doubtfully what virtue really was, whether she was not absolved from many rigid commandments by the failure of the world to keep faith with her and reward her for her own patience and atone for her own sufferings.

It was easy, only too easy, on the surface to feel that if she wanted to be gay and wanton, living for the hour, it was no one's affair but her own. She fought the question out in her mind. She fixed her determination on the young and, in one sense, inexperienced newspaper man whose ambitions pleased her fancy and whose innocence delighted her own mood.

He was down the river somewhere, and when she landed in at Mendova in the late twilight she saw his skiff swinging from the stern of a motorboat. Having made fast near it, she quickly learned that he had gone up town, and that someone had heard him say that he was going to Palura's.

Palura's! Nelia had heard the fascination of that den's ill-fame. She laughed to herself when she thought that Terabon would excuse his going there on the ground of its being right in his line of work, that he must see that place because otherwise he would not know how to describe it.

"If I can catch him there!" she thought to herself.

She went to Palura's, and Old Mississippi seemed to favour her. She found another woman who knew the ropes there and who was glad to help her play the game. From a distance Nelia Crele discovered that Terabon was with Carline, her own husband. She dismissed him with a shrug of her shoulders, and told her companion to take care of him.

Nelia, having plagued the soul of the River Prophet, Rasba, now with equal zest turned to seize Terabon, careless of where the game ended if only she could begin it and carry it on to her own music and in her own measure.

They had it all determined: Carline was to be wedged away with his friend, a cotton broker that Daisy—Nelia's newfound accomplice—knew, and Terabon was to be tempted to "do the Palace," and he was to be caught unaware, by Nelia, who wanted to dance with him, dine with him under bright lights, and drink dangerous drinks with him. She knew him sober and industrious, good and faithful, a decent, reputable working man—she wanted to see him waked up and boisterous, careless for her sake and because of her desires.

She just felt wicked, wanted to be wicked, and didn't care how wicked she might be. She counted, however, without the bonds which the Mississippi River seems at times to cast around its favourites—the Spirit of the river which looks after his own.

She had not even seen Policeman Laddam standing at the main entrance of the notorious resort, for Daisy had taken her through another door. She went to the exclusive "Third," and from there emerged onto the dancing floor just as Palura ostentatiously went forth to drive Laddam away, or to kill him.

Daisy checked her, for the minute or two of suspense, and then the whole scene, the tragedy, was enacted before her gaze. She was not frightened; she was not even excited; the thing was so astonishing that she did not quite grasp its full import till she saw Palura stumbling back, shot again and again. Daisy caught her arm and clutched it in dumb panic, and when the policeman calmly bent the cohorts of the dead man to his will and carried away his victims, Daisy dragged Nelia away.

Then Daisy disappeared and Nelia was left to her own devices.

She was vexed and disappointed. She knew nothing of the war in Mendova. Politics had never engaged her attention, and the significance of the artistic killing of Palura did not appear to her mind. She was simply possessed by an indignant feminine impatience to think that Terabon had escaped, and she was angry when she had only that glimpse of him, as with his notebook in hand he raced his pencil across the blank pages, jotting down the details and the hasty, essential impressions as he caught them.

She heard the exodus. She heard women sobbing and men gasping as they swore and fled. She gathered up her own cloak and left with reluctant footsteps.

She realized that she had arrived there just one day too late to "do" Palura's. The fugitives, as they scurried by, reminded her of some description which she had read of the Sack of Rome; or was it the Fall of Babylon? Their sins were being visited upon the wicked, and Nelia Crele, since she had not sinned, could not thrill with quite the same terror and despair of the wretches who had sinned in spite of their consciences, instead of through ignorance or wantonness. She took her departure not quite able to understand why there had been so much furore because one man had been killed.

She was among the last to leave the accursed place, and she saw the flight of the ones who had delayed, perhaps to loot, perhaps having just awakened to the fact of the tragedy. She turned toward Mousa Slough, and her little shanty-boat seemed very cool and bare that late evening. The bookshelves were all empty, and she was just a little too tired to sleep, just a little too stung by reaction to be happy, and rather too much out of temper to be able to think straight and clearly on the disappointment.

Mendova had been familiar in her ears since childhood; she had heard stories of its wildness, its gayeties, its recklessness. Impression had been made upon impression, so that when she had found herself nearing the place of her dreams, she was in the mood to enter into its wildest and gayest activities; she had expected to, and she had known in her own mind that when she met Terabon she would be irresistible.

At last she shuddered. She seemed to hear a voice, the river's voice, declare that this thing had happened to prevent her seeking to betray herself and Terabon, not to mention that other matter which did not affect her thought in the least, her husband's honour.

The idea of her husband's honour made the thing absurd to her. There was no such thing as that honour. She had plotted to get Carline out of the way now that she heard he was clear of the pirates. On second thought, she was sorry that she had been so hasty in returning to the boat, wishing that she had followed up Terabon.

She walked out onto the bow deck, and standing in the dark, with her door closed, looked up and down the slough. A dozen boats were in sight. She heard a number of men and women talking in near-by boats, and the few words she heard indicated that the river people had a pretty morsel of gossip in the killing of Palura.

She heard men rustling through the weeds and switch willows of the boatmen's pathway, and she hailed; she was now a true river woman, though she did not know it.

"Say, boys, do you know if Terabon and Carline landed here to-night?"

"We just landed in," one answered. "I don't know."

"Going up town?"

"Yes——"

"I want to know about them——"

"Hit's Nelia Crele!" one exclaimed.

"That's right. Hello, boys—Despard—Jet—Cope!"

"Sure! When'd you land?"

"Late this evening; I was up to Palura's when——"

"That ain't no place fo' a lady."

She laughed aloud, as she added, "I was there when Palura was killed by the policeman."

"Palura killed a policeman!" Despard said. "He's killed——"

"No, Palura was killed by a policeman. Shot him dead right on the dance-hall floor."

The pirates choked. The thing was unbelievable. They came down to the boat and she described the affair briefly, and they demanded details.

They felt that it would vitally affect Mendova. They whispered among themselves as to what it meant. They learned that a policeman had been stationed in front of the notorious resort and that that policeman had done the shooting during a fight with waiters and bouncers and with Palura himself.

"We hadn't better get to go up town," Jet whimpered. "Hit don't sound right!"

They argued and debated, and finally went on their way, having promised Nelia that they would see and tell Terabon, on the quiet, that she had come into the slough, and that she wanted to see him.

She waited for some time, hoping that Terabon would come, but finally went to sleep. She was tired, and excitement had deserted her. She slept more soundly than in some time.

Once she partly awakened, and thought that some drift log had bumped into her boat; then she felt a gentle undulation, as of the waves of a passing steamer, but she was too sleepy to contemplate that phenomenon in a rather narrow water channel around a bend from the main current.

It was not till she had slept long and well that she began to dream vividly. She was impatient with dreams; they were always full of disappointment.

Daylight came, and sunshine penetrated the window under which she slept. The bright rays fell upon her closed eyes and stung her cheeks. She awakened with difficulty, and looked around wonderingly. She saw the sunlight move along the wall and then drift back again. She felt the boat teetering and swaggering. She looked out of the window and saw a distant wood across the familiar, glassy yellow surface of the Mississippi. With a low whisper of dismay she started out to look around, and found that she was really adrift in mid-river.

On the opposite side of the boat she saw the blank side of a boat against her cabin window. As she stood there, she heard or felt a motion on the boat alongside. Someone stepped, or rather jumped heavily, onto the bow deck of her boat and flung the cabin door open.

She sprang to get her pistol, and stood ready, as the figure of a man stumbled drunkenly into her presence.



CHAPTER XXIX

Parson Elijah Rasba, the River Prophet, could not think what he would say to these river people who had determined to have a sermon for their Sabbath entertainment. Neither his Bible nor his hurried glances from book to book which Nelia Crele had given him brought any suggestion which seemed feasible. His father had always declared that a sermon, to be effective, "must have one bullet fired straight."

What bullet would reach the souls of these river people who sang ribald songs, danced to lively music, and lived clear of all laws except the one they called "The Law," a deadly, large-calibre revolver or automatic pistol?

"I 'low I just got to talk to them like folks," he decided at last, and with that comforting decision went to sleep.

The first thing, after dawn, when he looked out upon the river in all the glory of sunshine and soft atmosphere and young birds, he heard a hail:

"Eh, Prophet! What time yo' all goin' to hold the meeting?"

"Round 10 or 11 o'clock," he replied.

Rasba went to one of the boats for breakfast, and he was surprised when Mamie Caope asked him to invoke a blessing on their humble meal of hot-bread, sorghum, fried pork chops, oatmeal, fried spuds, percolator coffee, condensed cream, nine-inch perch caught that morning, and some odds and ends of what she called "leavings."

Then the women all went over on his big mission boat and cleaned things up, declaring that men folks didn't know how to keep their own faces clean, let alone houseboats. They scrubbed and mopped and re-arranged, and every time Rasba appeared they splashed so much that he was obliged to escape.

When at last he was allowed to return he found the boat all cleaned up like a honey-comb. He found that the gambling apparatus had been taken away, except the heavy crap table, which was made over into a pulpit, and that chairs and benches had been arranged into seats for a congregation. A store-boat man climbed to the boat's roof at 10:30, with a Texas steer's horn nearly three feet long, and began to blow.

The blast reverberated across the river, and echoed back from the shore opposite; it rolled through the woods and along the sandbars; and the Prophet, listening, recalled the tales of trumpets which he had read in the Bible. At intervals of ten minutes old Jodun filled his great lungs, pursed his lips, and swelled his cheeks to wind his great horn, and the summons carried for miles. People appeared up the bank, swamp angels from the timber brakes who strolled over to see what the river people were up to, and skiffs sculled over to bring them to the river meeting. The long bend opposite, and up and down stream, where no sign of life had been, suddenly disgorged skiffs and little motorboats of people whose floating homes were hidden in tiny bays, or covered by neutral colours against their backgrounds.

The women hid Rasba away, like a bridegroom, to wait the moment of his appearance, and when at last he was permitted to walk out into the pulpit he nearly broke down with emotion. There were more than a hundred men and women, with a few children, waiting eagerly for him. He was a good old fellow; he meant all right; he'd taken care of Jest Prebol, who had deserved to be shot; he was pretty ignorant of river ways, but he wanted to learn about them; he hadn't hurt their feelings, for he minded his own business, saying not a word about their good times, even if he wouldn't dance himself. They could do no better than let him know that they hadn't any hard feelings against him, even if he was a parson, for he didn't let on that they were sinners. Anyway, they wanted to hear him hit it up!

"I came down here to find a son whose mother was worrited about him," Rasba began at the beginning. "I 'lowed likely if I could find Jock it'd please his mammy, an' perhaps make her a little happier. And Jock 'lowed he'd better go back, and stand trial, even if it was a hanging matter.

"You see, I didn't expect you'd get to learn very much from me, and I haven't been disappointed. I'm the one that's learning, and when I think what you've done for me, and when I see what Old Mississip' does, friendlying for all of us, tripping us along——"

They understood. He looked at the boat, at them, and through the wide-open windows at the sun-rippled water.

"Now for religion. Seems like I'm impudent, telling you kindly souls about being good to one another, having no hard, mean feelings against anybody, and living like you ought to live. We're all sinners! Time and again hit's ag'in the grain to do what's right, and if we taste a taste of white liquor, or if hit's stained with burnt sugar to make hit red, why——"

"Sho!" someone grinned. "Parson Rasba knows!"

The preacher joined the laughter.

"Yas, suh!" he admitted, more gravely, "I know. I 'lowed, one time, that I'd git to know this yeah happiness that comes of liquor, an' I shore took one awful gulp. Three nights an' three days I neveh slept a wink, an' me settin' theh by the fireplace, waitin' to be lit up an' jubulutin', but hit didn't come. I've be'n happier, jes' a-settin' an' lookin' at that old riveh, hearin' the wild geese flocking by!

"That old riveh—Lawse! If the Mississippi brings you fish and game; if it gives you sheltered eddies to anchor in, and good banks or sandbars to tie against; if this great river out here does all that for you, what do you reckon the Father of that river, of all the world, of all the skies would do, He being so much friendlier and powerfuller?

"Hit's easy to forget the good that's done to you. Lots an' lots of times, I bet you've not even thought of the good you've had from the river, from the sunshine, from the winds, plenty to eat and warm of nights on your boats and in your cabins. It's easy to remember the little evil things, the punishments that are visited upon us for our sins or because we're ignorant and don't know; but reckon up the happiness you have, the times you are blessed with riches of comfort and pleasure, and you'll find yourself so much happier than you are sad that you'll know how well you are cared for.

"I cayn't preach no reg'lar sermon, with text-tes and singing and all that. Seems like I jes' want to talk along rambling like, and tell you how happy you are all, for I don't reckon you're much wickeder than you are friendly on the average. I keep a-hearing about murdering and stealing and whiskey boating and such things. They're signs of the world's sinfulness. We talk a heap about such things; they're real, of course, and we cayn't escape them. At the same time, look at me!

"I came down here, sorry with myse'f, and you make me glad, not asking if I'd done meanness or if I'd betrayed my friends. You 'lowed I was jes' a man, same's you. I couldn't tell you how to be good, because I wasn't no great shakes myse'f, and the worse I was the better you got. Buck an' Jock gives me this boat for a mission boat; I'm ignorant, an' a woman gives me——"

He choked up. What the woman had given him was too immeasurable and too wonderful for mere words to express his gratitude.

"I'm just one of those shoutin', ignorant mountain parsons. I could out-whoop most of them up yonder. But down yeah, Old Mississip' don't let a man shout out. When yo' play dance music, hit's softer and sweeter than some of those awful mountain hymns in which we condemn lost souls to the fire. Course, the wicked goes to hell, but somehow I cayn't git up much enthusiasm about that down yeah. What makes my heart rejoice is that there's so much goodness around that I bet 'most anybody's got a right smart chanct to get shut of slippin' down the claybanks into hell."

"Jest Prebol?" someone asked, seeing Prebol's face in the window of the little red shanty-boat moored close by, where he, too, could listen.

"Jest Prebol's been my guide down the riveh," the Prophet retorted. "I can say that I only wish I could be as good a pilot for poor souls and sinners toward heaven as Jest is a river pilot for a wandering old mountain parson on the Mississippi——"

"Hi-i-i!" a score of voices laughed, and someone shouted, "So row me down the Jordan!"

They all knew the old religious song which fitted so nicely into the conditions on the Mississippi. Somebody called to someone else, and the musicians in the congregation slipped away to return with their violins, banjos, accordions, guitars, and other familiar instruments. Before the preacher knew it, he had more music in the church than he had ever heard in a church before—and they knew what to play and what to sing.

The sermon became a jubilee, and he would talk along awhile till something he said struck a tuneful suggestion, and the singing would begin again; and when at last he brought the service to an end, he was astonished to find that he had preached and they had sung for more than two hours.

Then there was scurrying about, and from all sides the calm airs of the sunny Sabbath were permeated with the odours of roasts and fried things, coffee and sauces. A score wanted Rasba to dine out, but Mrs. Caope claimed first and personal acquaintance, and her claim was acknowledged. The people from far boats and tents returned to their own homes. Two or three boats of the fleet, in a hurry to make some place down stream, dropped out in mid-afternoon, and the little shanty-boat town was already breaking up, having lasted but a day, but one which would long be remembered and talked about. It was more interesting than murder, for murders were common, and the circumstances and place were so remarkable that even a burning steamboat would have had less attention and discussion.

The following morning Mrs. Caope offered Rasba $55 for his old poplar boat, and he accepted it gladly. She said she had a speculation in mind, and before nightfall she had sold it for $75 to two men who were going pearling up the St. Francis, and who thought that a boat a parson had tripped down in would bring them good luck.

The dancers of Saturday night, the congregation of Sunday, on Monday afternoon were scattered. Mrs. Caope's and another boat dropped off the river to visit friends, and mid-afternoon found Parson Rasba and Prebol alone again, drawing down toward Mendova.

Prebol knew that town, and he told Rasba about it. He promised that they would see something of it, but they could not make it that evening, so they landed in Sandbar Reach for the night. Just after dawn, while the rising sun was flashing through the tree tops from east to west, a motorboat driving up stream hailed as it passed.

"Ai-i-i, Prebol! Palura's killed up!"

Prebol shouted out for details, and the passer-by, slowing down, gave a few more:

"Had trouble with the police, an' they shot him daid into his own dance floor—and Mendova's no good no more!"

"Now what the boys goin' to do when they make a haul?" Prebol demanded in great disgust of Parson Rasba. "Fust the planters shot up whiskey boats; then the towns went dry, an' now they closed up Palura's an' shot him daid. Wouldn't hit make yo' sick, Parson! They ain't no fun left nowheres for good sports."

Rasba could not make any comment. He was far from sure of his understanding. He felt as though his own life had been sheltered, remote from these wild doings of murders and shanty-boat-fleet dances and a congregation assembling in a gambling boat handed to him for a mission! He could not quite get his bearings, but the books blessed him with their viewpoints, as numerous as the points of the compass. He could not turn a page or a chapter without finding something that gave him a different outlook or a novel idea.

They landed in late on Monday at Mendova bar, just above the wharf. Up the slough were many shanty-boats, and gaunt dogs and floppy buzzards fed along the bar and down the wharf.

Groups of men and women were scattered along both the slough and the river banks, talking earnestly and seriously. Rasba, bound up town to buy supplies, heard the name of Palura on many lips; the policemen on their beats waltzed their heavy sticks about in debonair skilfulness; and stooped, rat-like men passing by, touched their hats nervously to the august bluecoats.

When Rasba returned to the boat, he found a man waiting for him.

"My name is Lester Terabon," the man said. "I landed in Saturday, and went up town. When I returned, my skiff and outfit were all gone—somebody stole them."

"Sho!" Rasba exclaimed. "I've heard of you. You write for newspapers?"

"Yes, sir, and I'm some chump, being caught that way."

"They meant to rob you?" Rasba asked.

"Why, of——I don't know!" Terabon saw a new outlook on the question.

"Did they go down?"

"Yes, sir, I heard so. I don't care about my boat, typewriter, and duffle; what bothers me is my notebooks. Months of work are in them. If I could get them back!"

"What can I do for you?"

"I don't know—I'm going down stream; it's down below, somewhere."

"I need someone to help me," Rasba said. "I've a wounded man here who has a doctor with him. If he goes up to the hospital or stays with us, I'll be glad to have you for your help and company."

"I'm in luck." Terabon laughed with relief.

Just that way the Mississippi River's narrow channel brought the River Prophet and the river reporter together. Terabon went up town and bought some clothes, some writing paper, a big blank notebook, and a bottle of fountain-pen ink. With that outfit he returned on board, and a delivery car brought down his share of things to eat.

The doctor said Prebol ought to go into the hospital for at least a week, and Terabon found Prebol's pirate friends, hidden up the slough on their boat, not venturing to go out except at night. They took the little red shanty-boat up the slough, and Prebol went to the hospital.

Rasba, frankly curious about the man who wrote for newspapers for a living, listened to accounts of an odd and entertaining occupation. He asked about the Palura shooting which everyone was talking about, and when Terabon described it as he had witnessed it, Rasba shook his head.

"Now they'll close up that big market of sin?" he asked. "They've all scattered around."

"Yes, and they scattered with my skiff, too, and probably robbed Carline of his boat——"

"Carline! You know him?"

"I came down with him from Yankee Bar, and we went up to Palura's together. I lost him in the shuffle, when the big cop killed Palura."

"And Mrs. Carline, Nelia Crele?" Rasba demanded.

"Why—I—they said she'd landed in. She's gone, too——"

"You know her?"

"Why, yes—I——"

"So do I. Those books," he waved his hand toward the loaded shelves, "she gave them all to me for my mission boat!"

Terabon stared. He went to the shelves and looked at the volumes. In each one he found the little bookmark which she had used in cataloguing them:

Nelia Carline, A Loved Book. No. 87

A jealous pang seized him, in spite of his reportorial knowledge that jealousy is vanity for a literary person.

"I 'low we mout 's well drop out," Rasba suggested. "Missy Crele's down below some'rs. Her boat floated out to'd mornin', one of the boys said."



CHAPTER XXX

Carline had discovered his wife in the excitement at Palura's, and with the cunning of a drunken man had shadowed her. He followed her down to Mousa Bayou, and saw her go on board her cabin-boat. He watched, with more cunning, to see for whom she was waiting. He had in his pocket a heavy automatic pistol with which to do murder.

He had seen killing done, and the thing was fascinating; some consciousness that the policeman had done the right thing seemed now to justify his own intention of killing a man, or somebody.

Disappointment lingered in his mind when the lights went out on board Nelia's boat, and for a long time he meditated as to what he should do. He saw skiffs, motorboats, shanty-boats pulling hastily down the slough into the Mississippi. It was the Exodus of Sin. Mendova's rectitude had asserted its strength and power, and now the exits of the city were flickering with the shadows of departing hordes of the night and of the dark, all of whom had two fears: one of daylight, the other of sudden death.

Their departure before his eyes, with darkened boats, gave Carline an idea at last. He wanted to get away off somewhere, where he could be alone, without any interruption. Bitter anger surged in his breast because his wife had shamed him, left him, led him this any-thing-but-merry chase down the Mississippi. A proud Carline had no call to be treated thataway by any woman, especially by the daughter of an old ne'er-do-well whom he had condescended to marry.

He had always been a hunter and outdoor man, and it was no particular trick for him to cast off the lines of Nelia's boat and push it out into the sluggish current, and it was as easy for him to take his own boat and drop down into the river. He brought the two boats quietly together and lashed them fast with rope fenders to prevent rubbing and bumping—did it with surprising skill.

The Mississippi carried them down the reach into the crossing, and around a bend out of sight of even the glow of the Mendova lights. Here was one of those lonesome stretches of the winding Mississippi, with wooded bank, sandbar, sky-high and river-deep loneliness.

Carline, with alcoholic persistency, held to his scheme. He drank the liquor which he had salvaged in the riotous night. He thought he knew how to bring people to time, especially women. He had seen a big policeman set the pace, and the sound of the club breaking skull bones was still a shock in his brain, oft repeated.

The sudden dawn caught him by surprise, and he stared rather nonplussed by the sunrise, but when he looked around and saw that he was in mid-stream and miles from anywhere and from any one, he knew that there was no better place in the world for taming one's wife, and extorting from her the apologies which seemed to Carline appropriate, all things considered, for the occasion.

The time had arrived for action. He rose with dignity and buttoned up his waistcoat; he pulled down his coat and gave his cravat a hitch; he rubbed a tentative hand on the lump where the pirates had bumped him; he scrambled over the side onto the cabin-boat deck, and entered upon the scene of his conquest.

He found himself confronted by Nelia in a white-faced, low-voiced fury instead of in the mood he had expected. She wasn't sorry; she wasn't apologetic; she wasn't even amiable or conciliatory.

"Gus Carline! Drunk, as usual. What do you mean by this?"

"S'all right!" he assured her, flapping his hands. "Y're m'wife; I'm your husban'! S'all right!"

She drew her pistol and fired a bullet past him.

"Go!" she cried.

Before he knew what had happened he had backed out upon the bow deck, and she bundled him up onto his own craft. She cast off the bow line and ran to the stern to cast off the line there. As she did so, she discovered Terabon's skiff around at the far side where Carline could not see it.

Her husband was still shaking his fist in her direction, but the two boats were well apart as she rowed away with her sweeps. He stood there, undecided. He had not expected the sudden and effective resistance. Before he knew it, she was lost in a whole fleet of little houseboats which were, to his eyes, both in the sky, underwater, and scattered all over the tip-tilting surfaces.

The current, under the impulse of her rowing, carried Nelia into an eddy and she saw the cruiser rocking down a crossing into the mirage of the distance. She sat on the bow deck while her boat made a long swing in the eddy. Things did not happen down the river as she planned or expected. She regarded the previous night's entertainment with less indifference now; something about the calm of that broad river affected her. She realized that watching the killing of Palura had given her a shock so deep that now she was trembling with the weakness of horror.

She had seen Gus Carline stumble into her cabin, and with angry defiance she had acted with the intention of doing to him what she had done to Prebol—but she had missed deliberately when she shot. When she recalled the matter, she saw that for weeks she had been living in a false frame of mind; that she was desperate, and not contented; that she was afraid—and that she hated fear.

Her pistol was sign of her bravado, and her shots were the indication of her desperation. The memory of the wan face of Prebol brought down by her bullet was now an accusation, not a pride.

Old Mississip' had received her gently in her most furious mood, but now that immense, active calm of vast power was working on the untamed soul which she owned. The river swept along, and its majesty no longer gave her the feeling that nothing mattered. Far from it! Though she rebelled against the idea, her mind knew that she was in rebellion, that she was going against the current. And the river's mood was dangerous, now, to the wanton feelings to which she had desperately yielded but unsuccessfully.

The old, familiar, sharp division between right and wrong was presented to her gaze as if the river itself were calling her attention to it. She could not escape the necessity of a choice, with evil so persuasive and delightful and virtue so depressing and necessary.

She investigated Terabon's outfit with curiosity and questioning. His typewriter, his maps, his few books, his stack of notes neatly compiled in loose-leaf files, were the materials which caught and held her fancy. She took them on board her shanty-boat and read the record which he had made, from day to day, from his inspection of Commission records at St. Louis to the purchase of his boat in shanty-boat town, and his departure down the river.

His words were intimate and revealing:

Oct. 5; In mid-stream among a lot of islands; rafts of ducks; a dull, blue day, still those great limestone hills, with hollows through which the wind comes when opposite—coolies?——; in the far distance a rowboat. On the Missouri side, the hills; on the other the flats, with landing sheds. Ducks in great flocks—look like sea serpents when flying close to the water; like islands on it—wary birds.

That was above the part of the river which she knew; she turned to Kaskaskia, and read facts familiar to her:

I met Crele, an old hunter-trapper, in a slough below St. Genevieve. He was talkative, and said he had the prettiest girl on a hundred miles of river. She had married a man of the name of Carline, real rich and a big bug. "But my gal's got the looks, yes, indeed!" If I find her, I must be sure and tell her to write to her folks—river romance!

Nelia's face warmed as she read those phrases as well it might. She wondered what other things he had written in his book of notes, and her eye caught a page:

House boatmen are a bad lot. Once a young man came to work for a farmer back on the hills. He'd been there a month, when one night he disappeared; a set of double harness went with him. Another man hung around a week, and raided a grocery store, filling washtubs with groceries, cloth, and shoes—went away in a skiff.

She turned to where he travelled down the Mississippi with her husband and read the description of Gus Carline's whiskey skiff man, his purchase of a gallon of whiskey; the result, which her imagination needed but few words to visualize; then Terabon's drifting away down stream, leaving the sot to his own insensibilities.

Breathlessly she read his snatching sentences from bend to shoal, from reach to reach, until he described her red-hull, white cabin-boat, described the "young river woman" who occupied it; and then, page after page of memoranda, telling almost her own words, and his own words, as he had remembered them. What he wrote here had not been intended for her eyes.

She's dropping down this river all alone; pirates nor scoundrels nor river storms nor jeopardies seem to disturb her in the least. She even welcomes me, as an interesting sort of intellectual specimen, who can talk about books and birds and a multitude of things. She may well rest assured that none of us river rats have any designs, whatever, on a lady who shoots quick, shoots straight, and dropped Prebol at thirty yards off-hand with an automatic!

She read the paragraph with interest and then with care; she did not know whether to be pleased or not by that brutally frank statement that he was afraid of her—suppose he hadn't been afraid? Then, of what was he really afraid—not of her pistol! She read on through the pages of notes. The description of the walk with her up the sandbar and back, there at Island No. 10, thrilled her, for it told the apparently trifling details—the different kinds of sands, the sounds, the night gloom, the quick sense of the river presence, the glow of distant New Madrid. He had lived it, and he wrote it in terms that she realized were the words she might have used to describe her own observations and sensations.

She searched through his notes in vain for any suggestion of the emotions which she had felt. She shrugged her shoulders, because he had not written anything to indicate that he had discovered her allurement. He had written in bald words the fact of her sending him on the errand of rescue, to save her husband—and she was obliged to digest in her mind the bare but significant phrase:

And, because she has sent me, I am glad to go!

His notes made her understand him better, but they did not reveal all his own feelings. He wrote her down as an object of curiosity, as he spoke of the sour face and similitude of good humour in the whiskey boater's expression. In the same painstaking way he described her own friendliness for a passing skiff boater. The impersonality of his remarks about himself surprised while it perplexed her.

The mass of material which he had gathered for making articles and stories amazed her. The stack of pages, closely typewritten, was more than two inches thick. A few pages disclosed consecutive paragraphs with subjects, predicates, and complete sense, but other pages showed only disjointed phrases, words, and flashes of ideas.

The changing notes, the questioning, the observations, the minute recording were fascinating to her. It revealed a phase of writers' lives of which she had known nothing—the gathering of myriads of details, in order to free the mind for accurate rendering of pictures and conditions. She wished she could see some of the finished product of Terabon's use of these notes, and the wish revealed a chasm, an abyss that confronted her. She felt deserted, as though she had need of Terabon to give her a view of his own life, that she might be diverted into something not sordid, and decidedly not according to Augustus Carline's ideals!

After a time, seeing that Carline's boat had disappeared down river, she threw over her anchor, and rested in the eddy. It was on the west side, with a chute entrance through a sandbar and willow-grown island points opposite. She brought out her map book to see if she could learn where she was anchored, but the printed map, with the bright red lines of recent surveys, helped her not at all. She turned from sheet to sheet down to Memphis, without finding what she wanted to know.

She saw some shanty-boats down the river; she saw some up the river; but there was none near her till just before dark a motor skiff came down in the day's gray gloom, and passed within a few yards of her. When she looked at the two men in the boats she learned to know what fear is—river terror—horror of mankind in its last extremities of depravity and heartlessness.

She saw men stooped and slinking, whose glance was sidelong and whose expression was venomous, casting covert looks toward her as they passed by into the gray mist of falling night. They entered a narrow waterway among the sandbars, and left behind the feeling that along that waterway was the abiding place of lost souls. She wanted to take up the anchor and flee out onto the river, but when she looked into the darkening breadths, she felt the menace of the miles, of the mists, of the wooded shores. Foreboding was in her tired soul.

She examined her pistol, to make sure that it was ready to use; she locked the stern door, and drew the curtains; she went to the bow and looked carefully at the anchor-line fastenings. With no light on board to blind her gaze, she scrutinized all the surroundings, to make sure of her locality. In that blank gloom she was dubious but brave. Not a thing visible, not a sound audible, nothing but her remote and little understood sensation of premonitory dread explained her perturbation. She entered the cabin, locked the door, set the window catches and sticks, lighted the lamp, and sat down to—think. Her bookshelves were empty, and she was glad that she had emptied them in a good cause. It occurred to her that she ought to make up another list for her own service, and with pencil and paper she began that most fascinating work, the compilation of one's own library. As she made her selections, she forgot the menace which she had observed.

In the stillness she thought her own ears were ringing and paid no attention to the humming that increased in volume moment by moment. It was a flash of lightning without thunder that stirred her senses. She looked up from her absorption.

She heard a distant rumble, a near-by stirring. The wavelets along the side of the boat were noisy; they rattled like paper. Something fell clattering on the roof of the cabin, and a tearing, ripping, crashing struck the boat and fairly tossed it skipping along the surface of the water. The lamp blew out as a window pane broke, and the woman was thrown to the floor in a confusion of chairs, table, and other loose objects. Happily, the stove was screwed fast to the floor. The anchor line broke with a loud twang, and the black confusion was lighted with flares and flashes of gray-blue glaring.

The river had made Nelia Crele believe that she was in jeopardy from man; but it was a little hurricane, or, as the river people call them, cyclones, that menaced. Dire as was the confusion and imminent as was the peril, Nelia felt a sense of relief from what would have been harder to bear—an attack by men. She had searched the map for information, but it was the river which inspired her to understand that the hurricane was her deliverance rather than her assailant.

She did not know whether she would live or die during those seconds when the gale crashed like maul blows and wind and rain poured and whistled in at the broken window pane. She laughed at her predicament, tumbling in dishevelment around the bouncing cabin floor, and when the suck and send of the storm crater passed by, leaving a driving wind, she stepped out on the bows, and caught up her sweeps to ride the waves and face the gale that set steadily in from the north.

It was gray, impenetrable black—that night. She could see nothing, neither the waves nor the sky nor the river banks; but singing aloud, she steadied the boat, bow to the wind, holding it to the gale by dipping the sweeps deep and strong.

Beaten steadily back, unable to know how far or in what direction, she found her soul, serenely above the mere physical danger, loving that vast torrent more than ever.

The Mississippi trains its own to be brave.



CHAPTER XXXI

Parson Rasba and Terabon floated out into the main river current and ran with the stream. They were passing through the famous, changeable channels among the great sandbars from Island No. 34 down to Hopefield Bend. They rounded Dean Island Bend in the darkness, for they had floated all day and far into the night, driven by an anxiety which was inexplicable.

They wanted to be going; they felt an urge which they commented upon; it was a voice in their hearts, and not audible in their ears. Yet when they stood nervously at the great sweeps of the mission boat, to pull the occasional strokes necessary to clear a bar or flank a bend, they could almost declare that the river was talking.

They strained their ears in vain, trying to distinguish the meanings of the distant murmurings. Terabon, now well familiar with the river, could easily believe that he was listening to the River Spirit, and his feelings were melancholy.

For months he had strained every power of his mind to record the exact facts about the Mississippi, and he put down tens of thousands of words describing and stating what he saw, heard, and knew. With one stroke he had been separated from his work, and he feared that he had lost his precious notes for all time.

Either Carline or river pirates had carried them away. He hoped, he believed, that he would find them, but there was an uncertainty. He shivered apprehensively when he recalled with what frankness he had put down details, names, acts, rumours, reports—all the countless things which go to make up the "histories" of a voyage down from St. Louis in skiff, shanty-boat, and launch. What would they say if they read his notes?

He had notepaper, blank books, and ink, and he set about the weary task of keeping up his records, and putting down all that he could recall of the contents of his lost loose-leaf system. It was a staggering task.

In one record he wrote the habitual hour-to-hour description, comment, talk, and fact; in his "memory journal" he put down all the things he could recall about the contents of his lost record. He had written the things down to save him the difficulty of trying to remember, but now he discovered that he had remembered. A thousand times faster than he could write the countless scenes and things he had witnessed flocked back into the consciousness of his mind, pressing for recognition and another chance to go down in black and white.

As he wrote, Parson Rasba, in the intervals of navigating the big mission boat, would stand by gazing at the furious energy of his companion. Rasba had seized upon a few great facts of life, and dwelt in silent contemplation of them, until a young woman with a library disturbed the echoing halls of his mind, and brought into them the bric-a-brac of the thought of the ages. Now, from that brief experience, he could gaze with nearer understanding at this young man who regarded the pathway of the moon reflecting in a narrow line across a sandbar and in a wide dancing of cold blue flames upon the waters, as an important thing to remember; who recorded the wavering flight of the nigger geese, or cormorants, as compared to the magnificent V-figure, straight drive of the Canadians and the other huge water fowl; who paused to seize such simple terms as "jump line," "dough-bait," "snag line," "reef line," as though his life might depend on his verbal accuracy.

The Prophet pondered. The Mississippi had taught him many lessons. He was beginning to look for the lesson in casual phenomena, and when he said so to Terabon, the writer stared at him with open mouth.

"Why—that explains!" Terabon gasped.

"Explains what?"

"The heathen who was awed by the myriad impressions of Nature, and who learned, by hard experience, that he must not neglect even the apparently trivial things lest he suffer disaster."

Then Terabon fell to writing even more furiously in his day-by-day journal, for that was something of this moment, although he has just jotted down the renewed impression of coming into the bottoms at Cape Girardeau. Rasba took up the pages of the notes which Terabon was rewriting. Happily, Terabon's writing was like copper-plate script, however fast he wrote, and the mountain man read:

Big hickory tree grove—Columbus Hickories—Largest cane in some bend down below Helena—Spanish Moss bend—famous river bend—Fisherman at Brickey's Mill told of hoop nets, trammels, seines (stillwater bayous), jump, hand, snag, reef, lines——Jugging for catfish down the crossings, half pound pork, or meat, for bait, also called "blocking" for catfish.

"What will you do with all this?" Rasba asked.

"Why, I'll——" Terabon hesitated, and then continued: "It's like building a house. I gather all this material: lumber, stone, logs, cement, shingles, lathes, quick-lime, bricks, and everything. I store it all up in this notebook; that's my lumber yard. Then when I dig the foundation, I'll come in here and I'll find the things I need to build my house, or mansion. Of course, to start with, I'll just build little shacks and cabins. See what I mean? I am going to write articles first and they're kind of like barns and shacks, and even mere fences. But by and by I'll write fiction stories, and they will be like the mansions, and the material will all fit in: all about a fisherman, all about a market hunter, all about a drifter, all about a river——"

"All about a river woman?" Rasba asked, as he hesitated.

"I wasn't thinking that." Terabon shook his head, his colour coming a little. "I had in mind, all about a River Prophet!"

"Sho!" Rasba exclaimed. "What could you all find to write about a Riveh Prophet?"

Terabon looked at the stern, kindly, friendly, picturesque mountaineer who had come so far to find one man, for that man's mother, and he rejoiced in his heart to think that the parson did not know, could never know, because of the honest simplicity of his heart, how extraordinarily interesting he was.

So they drifted with the current, absorbed in their immediate present. It seemed as though they found their comprehension expanding and widening till it encompassed the answers to a thousand questions. Rasba, dazed by his own accretion of new interests, discovery of undreamed-of powers, seizure of opportunities never known before, could but gaze with awe and thankfulness at the evidences of his great good fortune, the blessings that were his in spite of his wondering why one of so little desert had received such bountiful favour. Terabon, remembering what he feared was irrevocably lost, knew that he had escaped disaster, and that the pile of notes which he had made only to be deprived of them were after all of less importance than that he should have suffered the deep emotion of seeing so much of his toil and time vanish.

Here it was again—Rasba might well wonder at that gathering and hoarding of trifles. They were not the important things, those minute words and facts and points; no, indeed.

At last Terabon knew that most important fact of all that it was the emotions that counted. As a mere spectator, he could never hope to know the Mississippi, to describe and write it truly; the river had forced him into the activities of the river life, and had done him by that act its finest service.

He was in the fervour of his most recent discovery when Rasba went out on the bow deck and looked into the night. He called Terabon a minute later, and the two looked at a phenomenon. The west was aglow, like a sunset, but with flarings and flashings instead of slowly changing lights and hues. The light under the clouds at the horizon extended through 90 degrees of the compass, and in the centre of the bright greenish flare there was a compact, black, apparently solid mass from which streaks of lightning constantly exuded on all sides.

For a minute Terabon stared, cold chills goose-pimpling his flesh. Then he cried:

"Cyclone, Parson! Get ready!"

They were opposite the head of a long bend near the end of a big sandbar, and skirting the edge of an eddy, near its foot. Terabon sprang into the gasolene launch, started the motor, and steered for the shelter of the west bank. In the quiet he and Rasba told each other what to do.

Rasba ran out two big anchors with big mooring lines tied to them. He closed the bow door but opened all the windows and other doors. Then, as they heard the storm coming, they covered the launch with the heavy canvas, heaved over the anchors into a fathom of water, let out long lines, and played the launch out over the stern on a heavy line fast to towing bits.

A sweep of hail and rain was followed by a moment of calm. Then a blast of wind, which scraped over the cabin roof, was succeeded by the suck of the tornado, which swept, a waterspout, across the river a quarter of a mile down stream, struck a sandbar, and carried up a golden yellow cloud of dust, which disappeared in the gray blackness of a terrific downpour of rain.

They stretched out on their anchor lines till the whole fabric of the cabin hummed and crackled with the strain, but the lines held, and the windows being open, prevented the semi-vacuum created by the storm's passing from "exploding" the boat, and tearing off the cabin, or the roof.

After the varying gusts and blasts the wind settled down, colder by forty degrees, and with the steady white of a norther. It meant days and nights of waiting while the storm blew itself out. And when the danger had passed and the boats were safe against the lines, the two men turned in to sleep, more tired after their adventures than they remembered ever being before.

In the morning rain was falling intermittently with some sleet, but toward afternoon there was just a cold wind. They built hot fires in their heater, burning coal with which the gamblers had filled bow and stern bins from coal barges somewhere up the river. Having plenty to eat on board, there was nothing to worry them.

Terabon, his fountain pen racing, wrote for his own distant Sunday Editor a narrative which excited the compiler of the Magazine Supplement to deep oaths of admiration for the fertile, prolific imagination of the wandering writer—for who would believe in a romance ready made?

The night of the big wind was followed by a day and a night of gusts of wind and sleety rain; then followed a day and a night of rising clouds, then a day when the clouds were scattered and the sun was cold. That day the sunset was grim, white, and freezing cold.

In the morning there was a bright, warm sunrise, a breath of sweet, soft air, and unimaginable brightness and buoyancy, birds singing, squirrels barking, and all the dismal pangs banished.

Shanty-boats shot out into the gay river and dotted the wide surface up and down the current for miles. The ears of the parson and the writer, keener with the acuteness of distant sounds, could hear music from a boat so far away that they could not see it, a wonderfully enchanting experience.

They, too, ran out into the flood of sunshine to float down with the rest.

At the foot of Brandywine Bar a little cabin-boat suddenly rowed out into the current and signalled them; somebody recognized and wanted to speak to the mission boat. They were rapidly sucking down the swift chute current, but Terabon turned over the motor, and flanked the big houseboat across the current so that the hail could be answered.

The little cabin-boat, almost lost to view astern, rapidly gained, and as they ran down Beef Island chute, where the current is slow, they were overtaken.

"Sho!" Parson Rasba cried aloud, "hit's Missy Carline, Missy Nelia, shore as I'm borned!"

Terabon had known it for half an hour. He had been noticing river details, and he could not fail to recognize that little boat. His hands trembled as he steered the launch to take advantage of slack current and dead water, and his throat choked with an emotion which he controlled with difficulty. He looked fearfully at the gaunt River Prophet whose own cheeks were staining with warm blood, and whose eyes gazed so keenly at the young woman who was coming, leaning to her sweeps with Viking grace and abandon.

She was coming to them, with the fatalistic certainty that is so astonishing to the student observer. Carried away by her sottish husband; threatened by the tornado; rescued, perhaps, by the storm from worse jeopardy, caught in safety under an island sandbar; her eyes, sweeping the lonesome breadths of the flowing river-sea, had seen and recognized her friend's boat, the floating mission, and pulled to join safe company.

She rowed up, with her eyes on the Prophet. He stood there in his majesty while Terabon stooped unnoticed in the engine pit of the motorboat. Not till she had run down near enough to throw a line did she take her eyes off the mountain parson, and then she turned and looked into the eyes, dumb with misery, of the other man, Terabon.

Her cheeks, red with her exertions, turned white. Three days she had read that heap of notes in loose-leaf file which Terabon had written. She had read the lines and between the lines, facts and ideas, descriptions and reminiscence, dialogue and history, statistics and appreciation of a thousand river things, all viewpoints, including her own.

She knew, now, how wicked she was. She knew, now, the wilfulness of her sins, and the merciful interposition of the river's inviolable strength. Her sight of the mission boat had awakened in her soul the knowledge that she must go out and talk to the good man on board, confess her naughtiness, and beg the Prophet for instruction. Woman-like, she knew what the outcome would be.

He would take her, protect her, and there would be some way out of the predicament in which they both found themselves. But again she reckoned without the river. How could she know that Terabon and he had come down the Mississippi together?

But there he was, chauffeuring for the Prophet!

She threw the line, Rasba caught it, drew the two boats together and made them fast. He welcomed her as a father might have welcomed a favourite child. He threw over the anchor, and Terabon dropped the launch back to the stern, and hung it there on a light line.

When he entered the big cabin Nelia was sitting beside a table, and Rasba was leaning against the shelves which he had put up for the books. Nelia, dumbfounded, had said little or nothing. When she glanced up at Terabon, she looked away again, quickly, flushing.

She was lost now. That was her feeling. Her defiance and her courage seemed to have utterly left her, and in those bitter days of cold wind and clammy rain, sleet and discomfort had changed the outlook of everything.

Married, without a husband; capable of great love, and yet sure that she must never love; two lovers and an unhappy marriage between her and happiness; a mind made up to sin, wantonly, and a soul that taunted her with a life-time of struggle against sordidness. The two men saw her burst into tears and cry out in an agony of spirit.

Dumbly they stood there, man-like, not knowing what to do, or what thought was in the woman's mind. The Prophet Rasba, his face full of compassion, turned from her and went aft through the alley into the kitchen, closing the doors behind him. He knew, and with knowledge he accepted the river fate.

Terabon went to her, and gave her comfort. He talked to her as a lover should when his sweetheart is in misery, her heart breaking. And she accepted his gentleness, and sobbed out the impossibility of everything, while she clung to him.

Within the hour they had plighted troth, regardless. She confessed to her lover, instead of to the Prophet. He said he didn't care, and she said she didn't care, either—which was mutually satisfactory.

When they went out to Parson Rasba, they found him calmly reading one of the books which she had given him. He looked up at their red faces and smiled with indulgence. They would never know what went on inside his heart, what was in his mind behind that kindly smile. That he knew and understood everything was clear to them, but they did not and would not have believed that he had, for a minute, hated Terabon as standing between him and happiness.

"What are we going to do?" Terabon cried, when he had told the Parson that they loved each other, that they would complete the voyage down the river together, that her husband still lived, and that they could get a $17.50 divorce at Memphis.

"Hit wouldn't be no 'count, that divorce." The Prophet shrugged his shoulders, and the two hung their heads. They knew it, and yet they had been willing to plead ignorance as an excuse for sin.

He seemed to close the incident by suggesting that it was time to eat something, and the three turned to getting a square meal. They cooked a bountiful dinner, and sat down to it, the Prophet asking a blessing that seared the hearts of the two because of its fervour.

THE END