, wing dams, government works, and chutes
and islands, but he would not offend any of them by showing that he did
not in the least understand what they were talking about. He must never
again hurt the feelings of any man or woman, and he must perform the one
service which the Deity had left for him to perform.

Little by little he began to understand that he was approaching the
Mississippi River. He saw the Cumberland one day, and two hours later,
he was witness to the Tennessee, and that long, wonderful bridge which a
railroad has flung from shore to shore of the great river. The current
carried him down to it, and his face turned up and up till he was swept
beneath that monument to man's inspiration and the industry of countless
hands.

Rasba had seen cities and railroads and steamboats, but all in a kind of
confusion and tumult. They had meant but incidents down the river; this
bridge, however, a structure of huge proportions, was clearly one piece,
one great idea fixed in steel and stone.

"How big was the man who built that bridge?" he asked himself.

While yet the question echoed in his expanding soul he hailed a passing
skiff:

"Strangeh! How fur now is it to the Mississippi River?"

"Theh 'tis!" the man cried, pointing down the current. "Down by that air
willer point!"

CHAPTER VI

Those first free days on the Mississippi River revealed to Nelia Crele a
woman she had never known before. Daring, fearless, making no reckoning,
she despised the past and tripped eagerly into the future. It was no
business of any one what she did. She had married a man who had turned
out to be a scoundrel, and when fate treated her so, she owed nothing to
any one or to anything. Even the fortune which she had easily seized
through the alcoholic imbecility of her semblance of a man brought no
gratitude to her. The money simply insured her against poverty and her
first concern was to put that money where it would be safe from raiders
and sure to bring her an income. This, watchfulness and alertness of
mind had informed her, was the function of money.

She dropped into Cape Girardeau, and sought a man whom she had met at
her husband's house. This was Duneau Menard, who had little interest in
the Carlines, but who would be a safe counsellor for Nelia Crele. He
greeted her with astonishment, and smiles, and told her what she needed
to know.

"I was just thinking of you, Nelia," he said, "Carline's sure raising a
ructi