fellow there, what's his name? He
told me if I happened to see his daughter I should tell her to write
him, for her mother wanted to hear."

"He said that! And you--it was Crele, Darien Crele said that?"

"That's the name--Nelia, his daughter."

"Yes, sir. I know. I guess I know! She's my wife--she was--It's
her----"

"You're looking for?"

"Yes, sir; she ran away and left me. She came down here."

"Kind of a careless girl, I imagine?"

"Careless! God, no! The finest woman you ever saw. It was me--I was to
blame. I never knew, I never knew!"

For a minute he held up his arms, looking tensely at the sky, struggling
to overcome the emotion that long had been boiling up in his heart,
rending the self-complacency of his mind. Then he broke down--broke down
abjectly, and fell upon the cabin floor, crying aloud in his agony,
while the newspaper man sitting there whispered to himself:

"Poor devil, here's a story! He's sure getting his. I don't want to
forget this; got to put this down. Poor devil!"

CHAPTER XIII

"And he says he's a sinner himself," Nelia repeated, when she returned
on board her cabin-boat in the sheltering safety of Wolf Island chute,
with Mamie Caope, Parson Rasba, and the other shanty-boaters within a
stone's toss of her.

Till she was among them, among friends she trusted, she had not noticed
the incessant strain which she endured down those long, grim river
miles. Now she could give way, in the privacy of her boat, to feminine
tears and bitterness. Courage she had in plenty, but she had more
sensitiveness than courage. She was not yet tuned to the river
harmonies.

Something in Rasba's words, or it was in his voice, or in the quick,
full-flood of his glance, touched her senses.

"You see, missy, I'm a sinner myse'f!"

What had he meant? If he had meant that she, too, was a sinner, was that
any of his business? Of course, being a parson--she shrugged her
shoulders. Her thoughts ran swiftly back to her home that used-to-be.
She laughed as she recalled the deprecatory little man who had preached
in the church she had occasionally attended. She compared the trim,
bird-like perspicuity and wing-flap gestures of Rev. Mr. Beeve with the
slow, huge turn and stand-fast of Parson Rasba.

She was glad to escape the Mississippi down this little chute; she was
glad to have a phrase to puzzle over instead of the ever-present problem
of her own future and her own fate; she was glad that sh