ost
efforts. Finally, faint for want of food, exhausted, and disheartened,
the poor boy threw himself in the bottom of the skiff and yielded to
his despair. At length he fell asleep.

So the dawn of Winn's second day on the river caught him napping, as
the first had done. In its gray light the skiff drifted past the
little city of Dubuque, perched high on the bluffs of the western bank,
but no one saw it. There were several steamboats and trading scows
tied to the narrow levee, but their crews were still buried in slumber.
Even had they been awake they would hardly have noticed the little
craft far out in the stream, drifting with the hurrying waters. In a
few minutes it was gone, and the sleeping city was none the wiser for
its passing. So for hours it drifted, now bow on, then broadside to,
and as often stern first; here caught and spun round by an eddy, then
tossed aside and allowed to proceed on its unguided course. The
cotton-woods on the tow-heads beckoned to it with their trembling
fingers; but it paid no heed. Grim snags lay in wait for it, but it
nimbly avoided them, and as the hours passed each one of them saw the
drifting skiff some miles farther away from the island at which this
strange voyage was begun.

When Winn finally awoke, he was so bewildered, and so much at a loss to
account for his surroundings, that for a minute he lay motionless,
collecting his scattered senses. It certainly was late in the day, for
the sun was shining full upon him from high in the heavens. He had
that comfort at least; but oh! how he ached from lying on that hard
floor, and how faint he was from hunger.

The boy's head rested on a thwart, and he faced the after-end of the
skiff. As he was about to rise, his glance fell on something wrapped
in newspaper and tucked under the stern seat. If it should only prove
to be food of any description, "even burned mush," thought Winn,
grimly, how happy it would make him! In another second he was undoing,
with eager fingers, the lunch of crackers and cheese that Sheriff
Riley's wife had so thoughtfully thrust into her husband's hands as he
left the house the morning before, and which he had as thoughtfully
tucked under the stern seat of his skiff. He was probably thinking of
it, and wishing he had it, at this very moment. As for Winn, he was
eating it as fast as possible, and thinking that he had never tasted
such good crackers or such a fine piece of cheese in his life.