on his knees and his eyes fastened upon the floor,
"things is getting sorter ticklish down here in this neck of the woods
already. Nobody don't know who he can trust."

"Don't you believe what the _Able's_ captain said about me?" inquired
Rodney, who had little dreamed that he would become an object of
suspicion almost as soon as he set his foot on Missouri soil. "He told
me you were true blue."

"And so we are, when we know the feller we're talking to." said the man
who was sitting in front of him, and whom he afterward heard addressed
as Nels. "Now I want you to answer me a few questions: where did you
board the _Mollie Able?_"

Rodney, who was not at all used to this sort of thing, began to grow red
in the face, but fortunately he did not hesitate an instant.

"I got on at Baton Rouge," he said.

"Is that place this side of Cairo?"

"No; it is the other side."

"Did you stop at Cairo on your way up?"

"The _Able_ was there perhaps half an hour."

"Then I can see through some of it as plain as daylight," exclaimed
Nels, straightening up on his nail keg and shaking his hand at Jeff. "He
was at Cairo long enough to change his clothes, swap hosses and have his
whiskers shaved off; but why he should have the cap'n of the _Able_ set
him ashore here at this landing, beats my time. Don't it your'n?" There
were signs of excitement in the cabin, and Rodney felt the cold chills
creeping over him. The wood-cutters were wofully ignorant, quite as open
to reason as so many wooden men would have been, and if they suspected
him of trying to play some trick upon them, Rodney could not imagine how
he should go to work to set them right. He glanced at their scowling
faces and told himself that he would not have been in greater danger if
he had been a prisoner in the hands of the Yankees.

"I should like to know what you mean by this foolishness?" exclaimed
Rodney, growing excited in his turn.

"Mebbe you'll find that there aint no great foolishness about it before
we've got through with you," answered Nels; and Rodney noticed that one
of the wood-cutters moved his seat so as to get between him and the
door.

"I shall know more about that after you have told me who and what you
take me for," continued Rodney. "Do you think you ever saw me before?"

"Well, as to your face and clothes we might be mistook," replied Nels,
slowly. "But you had oughter hid that watch chain before you come back
amongst we-uns."

He reached o