laughing scorn of the man who had thought to impose himself on her,
against her own will.

"That's it!" she said, half aloud, "I needn't to allow any man to be
mean to me!"

She had given her future but little thought; now she wondered, and she
pondered. She was free, she was independent, and she was assured of her
living. She had even been more shrewd than old Attorney Menard had
suspected; the money she had left with him was hardly half of her
resources. She had another plan, by which she would escape the remote
possibility of Menard's proving faithless to his trust, as attorneys
with his opportunities sometimes have proved.

Nelia Crele could not possibly be regarded as an ordinary woman, as a
mere commonplace, shack-bred, pretty girl. Down through the years had
come a strain of effectiveness which she inherited in its full strength;
she was as inexplicable as Abraham Lincoln. Her stress of mind relieved,
she regarded the shooting of the man with increasing satisfaction,
since by such things a woman could be assured of respect.

Gaiety had never been a part of her childhood or girlhood; she had
withstood the insidious attacks and menaces that threatened her down to
the day when Gus Carline had come to her. Courted by him, married, and
then living in the clammy splendour of the house of a back-country rich
man, she had found no happiness, but merely a kind of animal comfort.
She had had the Carline library to read, and she had brought with her
the handy pocket volumes which had been her own and her delight. She was
glad of the foresight which enabled her to put into a set of book
shelves the companions which had, alone, been her comfort and
inspiration during the few years of her wedded misery.

Now, on the Mississippi, in the shanty-boat, she need consult only her
own fancy and whim. Mistress of her own affairs, as she supposed, she
could read or she could think.

"I do what I please!" she thought, a little defiantly. "It's nobody's
business what I do now; what'd Mrs. Plosell care what people said about
her? I'll read, if I want to, and I'll flirt if I want to--and I'll do
anything I want to----"

She reckoned without the Mississippi. Everybody does, at first. Her
money was but a means to an end. She knew its use, its value, and the
perfect freedom which it gave her; its protection was not
underestimated.

At the same time, sloth was no sin of hers. Living on the river insured
physical activity; her books