who are of all bloods--tramps of the running
floods. He listened to narratives stranger than any other attorney; in
his safe he had documents of interest to sweethearts and wives, to
husbands and sons, to fugitives and hunters. Letters came to him from
all parts of the great basin, giving him directions, or notifying him of
the termination of lives whose passing had a significance or a meaning.

Nelia's mother knew him, and Nelia herself recalled his good-humoured
smile, his weathered face, his appeal to a girl for her confidence, and
the certainty that her confidence would be respected. She had gone to
him as naturally as she would have gone to a decent father or a wise
mother. She took from him his neatly written receipt, but with the
feeling that it was superfluous. In a little while she returned to the
shanty-boat and dropped out of the eddy on her way down the river. She
floated under the big Thebes Bridge, and landed against the west bank
before dark, there to have the luck to shoot a wild goose. The maps
showed that she was approaching the Lower Mississippi.

When she had left Cape Girardeau, she had noticed a little brick-red
shanty-boat which landed in just below her own. Without looking up, she
discovered that a man leaned against the roof of his low cabin whose
eyes did not cease to watch her every motion while she cast off, coiled
her ropes, and leaned to the light sweeps.

When she was a safe distance down the river, she ventured to look up
stream, and saw that the little red shanty-boat had left its mooring,
and that the man was coming down the current astern of her. It was a
free river; any one could go whither he pleased, but the certainty that
she had attracted the man's attention revealed to her the necessity of
considering her position there alone and dependent on her own
resources.

She remembered the two market hunters, and their warnings. The man
astern was a patient, lurking, menacing brute, who might suspect her of
having property enough to make a river piracy worth while; or he might
have other designs, since she was unfortunately good-looking and
attractive. Night would surely be his opportunity and the test of her
soul.

She could have landed at Commerce, where there were several shanty-boats
and temporary safety; she could have floated on down at night and
slipped into the shore in the dark, her lights out; she could have tried
flight down the river hoping to lose the brick-red boat; she