e first thing, after dawn, when he looked out upon the river in all
the glory of sunshine and soft atmosphere and young birds, he heard a
hail:

"Eh, Prophet! What time yo' all goin' to hold the meeting?"

"Round 10 or 11 o'clock," he replied.

Rasba went to one of the boats for breakfast, and he was surprised when
Mamie Caope asked him to invoke a blessing on their humble meal of
hot-bread, sorghum, fried pork chops, oatmeal, fried spuds, percolator
coffee, condensed cream, nine-inch perch caught that morning, and some
odds and ends of what she called "leavings."

Then the women all went over on his big mission boat and cleaned things
up, declaring that men folks didn't know how to keep their own faces
clean, let alone houseboats. They scrubbed and mopped and re-arranged,
and every time Rasba appeared they splashed so much that he was obliged
to escape.

When at last he was allowed to return he found the boat all cleaned up
like a honey-comb. He found that the gambling apparatus had been taken
away, except the heavy crap table, which was made over into a pulpit,
and that chairs and benches had been arranged into seats for a
congregation. A store-boat man climbed to the boat's roof at 10:30, with
a Texas steer's horn nearly three feet long, and began to blow.

The blast reverberated across the river, and echoed back from the shore
opposite; it rolled through the woods and along the sandbars; and the
Prophet, listening, recalled the tales of trumpets which he had read in
the Bible. At intervals of ten minutes old Jodun filled his great lungs,
pursed his lips, and swelled his cheeks to wind his great horn, and the
summons carried for miles. People appeared up the bank, swamp angels
from the timber brakes who strolled over to see what the river people
were up to, and skiffs sculled over to bring them to the river meeting.
The long bend opposite, and up and down stream, where no sign of life
had been, suddenly disgorged skiffs and little motorboats of people
whose floating homes were hidden in tiny bays, or covered by neutral
colours against their backgrounds.

The women hid Rasba away, like a bridegroom, to wait the moment of his
appearance, and when at last he was permitted to walk out into the
pulpit he nearly broke down with emotion. There were more than a hundred
men and women, with a few children, waiting eagerly for him. He was a
good old fellow; he meant all right; he'd taken care of Jest Prebol, who
had des