'

The time wore on, and other steamboats coming from the point on which
their hopes were fixed, arrived to take in wood; but still no answer
to the letter. Rain, heat, foul slime, and noxious vapour, with all the
ills and filthy things they bred, prevailed. The earth, the air, the
vegetation, and the water that they drank, all teemed with deadly
properties. Their fellow-passenger had lost two children long before;
and buried now her last. Such things are much too common to be widely
known or cared for. Smart citizens grow rich, and friendless victims
smart and die, and are forgotten. That is all.

At last a boat came panting up the ugly river, and stopped at Eden. Mark
was waiting at the wood hut when it came, and had a letter handed to
him from on board. He bore it off to Martin. They looked at one another,
trembling.

'It feels heavy,' faltered Martin. And opening it a little roll of
dollar-notes fell out upon the ground.

What either of them said, or did, or felt, at first, neither of them
knew. All Mark could ever tell was, that he was at the river's bank
again out of breath, before the boat had gone, inquiring when it would
retrace its track and put in there.

The answer was, in ten or twelve days; notwithstanding which they began
to get their goods together and to tie them up that very night. When
this stage of excitement was passed, each of them believed (they found
this out, in talking of it afterwards) that he would surely die before
the boat returned.

They lived, however, and it came, after the lapse of three long crawling
weeks. At sunrise, on an autumn day, they stood upon her deck.

'Courage! We shall meet again!' cried Martin, waving his hand to two
thin figures on the bank. 'In the Old World!'

'Or in the next one,' added Mark below his breath. 'To see them standing
side by side, so quiet, is a'most the worst of all!'

They looked at one another as the vessel moved away, and then looked
backward at the spot from which it hurried fast. The log-house, with the
open door, and drooping trees about it; the stagnant morning mist, and
red sun, dimly seen beyond; the vapour rising up from land and river;
the quick stream making the loathsome banks it washed more flat and
dull; how often they returned in dreams! How often it was happiness to
wake and find them Shadows that had vanished!

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

IN WHICH THE TRAVELLERS MOVE HOMEWARD, AND ENCOUNTER SOME DISTINGUISHED
CHARACTERS UPON