comes the Riveh Prophet
after yo sinners. Hi-i-i!"

There was a laugh through the crowd. Others strolled out to see the
phenomenon. A man who had been playing with fortune at one of the poker
tables swore aloud.

"I cayn't neveh git started, I don't shift down on my luck!" he whined.
"Las' time, jes' when I was coming home, I see a piebald mewl, an' now
hyar comes a parson. Dad drat this yeah ole riveh! I'm goin' to quit.
I'm gwine to go to Hot Springs!"

These casual asides were as nothing, however, to the tumult that stirred
in the soul of Jock Drones, who had been cutting bread to make
boiled-ham sandwiches for their patrons that night. His acute hearing
had picked up the sound of the coming shanty-boat, and he had felt the
menace of a stranger dropping in after dark. Few men not on mischief
bent, or determined to run all night, run into shanty-boat eddies.

He even turned down the light a little, and looked toward the door to
see if the way was clear. The hail relieved the tension of his mind
strain, but only for a minute. Then he heard that answer.

"Rasba!" he heard. "Parson Elijah Rasba, suh. Out of the Ohio!"

In a flash he knew the truth! Old Rasba, whose preaching he had
listened to that bloody night away up in the mountains, had come down
the rivers. A parson, none else, was camping on the mountain fugitive's
trail. That meant tribulation, that meant the inescapableness of sin's
punishment--not in jails, not in trial courts, not on the gallows, but
worse than that!

"Come abo'd, Parson!" someone shouted, and the boats bumped. There was a
scramble to make a line fast, and then the trampling of many feet, as
the Prophet was introduced to that particular river hell, amid stifled
cries of expectancy and murmurs of warning. Next to being raided by the
sheriff of an adjacent county, having a river prophet come on board is
the greatest excitement and the smartest amusement of the bravados down
the river.

"Hyar's the Prophet!" a voice shouted. "Now git ready fo' yo' eternal
damnation. See 'im gather hisse'f!"

Rasba gathering himself! Jock could not help but take a peep. It was
Rasba, gaunt, tall, his head up close to the shanty-boat roof and his
shoulders nearly a head higher than the collars of most of those men who
stood by with insolence and doubtful good humour.

"Which'd yo' rather git to play, Parson?" someone asked, slyly. "Cyards
er bones er pull-sticks?"

"I've a friend down yeah, gentlemen.