e filing back, stooping under their burdens. It was a scene
of animation, of excitement, savage, grotesque, fascinating.

Susan, trembling a little, so tense were her nerves, waited
until the last struggling roustabouts were staggering on the
boat, until the deep whistle sounded, warning of approaching
departure. Then she took up her bundle and put herself in the
line of roustabouts, between a half-naked negro, black as coal
and bearing a small barrel of beer, and a half-naked mulatto
bearing a bundle of loud-smelling untanned skins. "Get out of
the way, lady!" yelled the mate, eagerly seizing upon a new text
for his denunciations. "Get out of the way, you black hellions!
Let the lady pass! Look out, lady! You damned sons of hell,
what're you about! I'll rip out your bowels----"

Susan fled across the deck and darted up the stairs to the
saloon. The steamer was all white without except the black metal
work. Within--that is, in the long saloon out of which the
cabins opened to right and left and in which the meals were
served at extension tables--there was the palatial splendor of
white and gilt. At the forward end near the main entrance was
the office. Susan, peering in from the darkness of the deck, saw
that the way was clear. The Sutherland passengers had been
accommodated. She entered, put her bundle down, faced the clerk
behind the desk.

"Why, howdy, Miss Lenox," said he genially, beginning to twist
his narrow, carefully attended blond mustache. "Any of the folks
with you?"

She remembered his face but not his name. She remembered him as
one of the "river characters" regarded as outcast by the
Christian respectability of Sutherland. But she who could not
but be polite to everybody smiled pleasantly, though she did not
like his expression as he looked at her. "No, I'm alone," said she.

"Oh--your friends are going to meet you at the wharf in the
morning," said he, content with his own explanation. "Just sign
here, please." And, as she wrote, he went on: "I've got one room
left. Ain't that lucky? It's a nice one, too. You'll be very
comfortable. Everybody at home well? I ain't been in Sutherland
for nigh ten years. Every week or so I think I will, and then
somehow I don't. Here's your key--number 34 right-hand side,
well down toward the far end, yonder. Two dollars, please. Thank
you--exactly right. Hope you sleep well."

"Thank you," said Susan.

She turned away with the key w