n Steering's bunk for a moment to
take breath. Once his hand patted the covers, and once he stooped down
and clung to the pillow.

"Oh, may God bless you! For I love him, my dear Piney! Bless you, for I
love him, my dear Piney!" he kept saying over and over, with an
hysterical quaver in his voice, his lips pale and moving constantly.
"Oh, may God bless you, for I love him, my dear Piney!" It was what
Salome Madeira had said to him when he had left her, a white, angelic
figure, swaying a little toward him, there in the garden back of Madeira
Place. "Oh, may God--for I love him!"

The odour of Bruce's cigars hung about the shack. Piney jumped up
suddenly and went down close to the Di to wait and think. At Redbud the
river seemed fiercer than farther up-stream. One of the two skiffs that
rocked there usually was there now, swashing up and down in the current,
but the other was gone. There was a strong eddy in front of Redbud. The
bar, Singing Sand, and the Deerlick Rocks choked up the bed of the river
and made the water dash vehemently through a narrow channel. Logs went
by and branches of trees. Piney paced the bank in a rising fever of
impatience, calling, calling; but for a long time his call was without
avail, the wind roared so defeatingly in the trees. Close into Deerlick
Rocks drifted a great fleet of logs.

"Mist' Steerin'! Mist' Steerin'!" The sweet tenor broke again and again,
but again and again Piney pitched a vast effort into it. And, at last,
an answer:

"Halloo! That you, Uncle Bernique? I've been----" The voice was
wind-blown, and slipped weakly away.

"It's ME! Where are you?" No answer. "Where are you? Hi! Is that you by
the bar? Lif' your han' above the drif'-wood! Cayn't you lif' your
han'?"

A hand shot up from the back of a log that was well hidden by other
flotsam, then fell back weakly. "Ay, here I am! Dead-beat, Piney----" A
long roar of wind shut off the rest.

"Hold to your log. I'm a-comin'! comin'! comin'!" The tenor rang and
rang across the water as Piney loosed the skiff from its moorings, took
up the oars, and pushed out into the Di. With the force in that whirl of
black water he realised that there was danger; the skiff trembled and
leaped as though some wrathful AEgir caught and shook it. It was well for
Steering that Piney was strong, with the strength of the hills and the
woods and the quiet.

As he went on some sort of revulsion seized Piney. He stopped calling
and began to m