o answer as he could for the sins of the guilty.

Who could be sure? Could she go into court and swear that this man and
the man she had seen in the bank were one and the same? Yesterday she
had thought that she could; but to-day she was equally sure that she
could not.

But the Puritan conscience was not to be entirely silenced. Reason sits
in a higher seat than that occupied by the senses, and reason argued
that a man who would forgive his enemy, and instantly risk his life in
proof of the forgiveness, could not be a desperate criminal. Conscience
pointed out the alternative. A little careful investigation would
remove the doubt--or confirm it. Somebody on the boat must know the
deck-hand, or know enough about him to establish his real identity.

Naturally, Charlotte thought first of Captain Mayfield; and when
breakfast was over, and she had settled her aunt in the invalid's chair
under the shade of the after-awning, she went on her quest.

The captain was on the port promenade, forward, and he was about to
light his after-breakfast cigar. But he threw the match away when Miss
Farnham came out and took the chair he placed for her.

"Please smoke if you want to," she said, noting the clipped cigar; "I
don't mind it in the least."

"Thank you," said the master of the _Belle Julie_, shifting his chair to
leeward and finding another match. He had grown daughters of his own,
and Miss Farnham reminded him of the one who lived in St. Louis and took
her dead mother's place in a home which would otherwise have held no
welcome for a grizzled old river-sailor.

For a time Miss Farnham seemed to have forgotten what she came to say,
and the ash grew longer on the captain's cigar. It was another
delectable day, and the _Belle Julie_ was still churning the brown flood
in the majestic reaches of the lower river. Down on the fore-deck the
roustabouts were singing. It was some old-time plantation melody, and
Charlotte could not catch the words; but the blending harmony, rich in
the altogether inimitable timbre of the African song-voice, rose above
the throbbing of the engines and the splash of the paddles.

"They are happy, those men?" said Charlotte, turning suddenly upon the
silent old riverman at her side.

"The nigger 'rousties,' you mean?--oh, yes. I guess so."

"But it is such a hard life," she protested. "I don't see how they can
sing."

The captain smiled good-naturedly.

"It is a pretty hard life," he admitted. "