as to shoot, fearin' of men."

Rasba landed the two boats in at the foot of a sandbar, and made them
fast to old stakes driven into the top of the low reef. He brought his
patient some hot soup, and after they had eaten supper, he sat down to
talk to him, keeping the man company in his pain, and leading him on to
talk about the river, and the river people.

In that first adventure at the Ohio's forks Rasba had discovered his own
misconceptions, and the truth of the Mississippi had been partly
revealed to him. What the Tug was to the Big Sandy, what the Big Sandy
was to the Ohio, the Ohio was to the Mississippi. What he had looked to
as the end was but the beginning, and Rasba was lost in the immensity of
the river that was a mile wide, thousands of miles long, and unlike
anything the mountain preacher had ever dreamed of. If this was the
Mississippi, what must the Jordan be?

"My name's Prebol," the man said, "Jest Prebol. I live on Old
Mississip'! I live anywhere, down by N'Orleans, Vicksburg--everywhere!
I'm a grafter, I am--"

"A grafter?" Rasba repeated the strange word.

"Yas, suh, cyards, an' tradin' slum, barberin' mebby, an' mebby some
otheh things. I can sell patent medicine to a doctor, I can! I clean
cisterns, an' anything."

"You gamble?" Rasba demanded, grasping one fact.

"Sho!" Prebol grinned. "Who all mout _yo'_ be?"

"Elijah Rasba," was the reply. "I am seeking a soul lost from the
sheepfold of God. I ask but the strength to find him."

"A parson?" Prebol asked, doubtfully, his eyes resting a little in their
uneasy flickerings. "One of them missionaries?"

"No, suh." Rasba shook his head, humbly. "Jes' a mountang parson,
lookin' for one po'r man, low enough fo' me to he'p, maybe."

Prebol made no reply or comment. His mind was grappling with a fact and
a condition. He could not tell what he thought. He remembered with some
worriment, that he had cursed under the pain of the dressing of the
wound. He knew that it never brought any man good luck to swear within
ear-range of any parson.

He could think of nothing to do, just then, so he pretended weariness,
which was not all pretense, at that. Rasba left him to go to sleep on
his cot, and went over to his own boat, where, after an audible session
on his knees, he went to bed, and fell into a sound and dreamless
sleep.

In the morning, when the parson awakened, his first thought was of his
patient, and he started out to look after the man. H