was
no whars in all his borned days an an i hear now he is gettin bad
down thataway on Misipy riveh where thas all Bad Peple an i wisht
yud prey fer him so's he wont get bad. Mrs. drones panted church on
Clinch.

Rasba read the letter for the words at first. Then he went back after
the meaning, and the meaning struck him like a blow in the heart.

"Me pray fo' any man again," he gasped. "Lawse! Lawse!"

He didn't feel fit to pray for himself, let alone for any other sinner,
but there came to his memory a picture of Mrs. Drones, a motherly little
woman who had taken him home to a dinner at which seven kinds of
preserved fruit were on the table, and where the family laughed around
the fireplace--only to see Jock a fugitive the next night, and the
terrors of a feud war upon them.

"And Jock's getting bad down the Mississippi River!" Rasba repeated to
himself, striving to grapple with that fact. He could not think clearly
or coherently. The widow's voice, however, was as clearly speaking in
his thoughts as though she stood there, instead of merely having written
to him. He took to walking up and down the floor, back and forth, on one
plank.

He had forgotten that there was such a thing for humans as sleep. The
incongruity of his having been wide awake for two days and two nights
did not occur to him till suddenly his eyes turned to the bed in the
corner of the room and its purpose was recalled to his mind. He blinked
at it. His eyes opened with difficulty. He threw chunks on the fire and
went toward the bed, but as he stood by it the world grew black before
his eyes and clutching about him, he sank to the floor.

CHAPTER IV

Nelia Carline would not return to that miserable little river-bottom
cabin where she had grown up in unhappy privation. She had other plans.
She drove the little automobile down to Chester, put it in the Star
Garage, then walked to the river bank and gave the eddy a critical
inspection.

For years she had lived between the floods of the river and the poverty
of the uplands. Her life had often crossed that of river people, and
although she had never been on the river, she had frequently gone
visiting shanty-boaters who had landed in for a night or a week at the
bank opposite her own shack home. She knew river men, and she had no
illusions about river women. Best of all now, in her great emergency,
she knew shanty-boats, and as she gazed at the eddy and saw the fleet of
housebo