y mind," Nelia said, adding, with a touch of
bitterness, "I don't reckon it makes so much difference!"

"Lots that comes down feel thataway," Mrs. Disbon nodded, with sympathy,
"Seems like some has more'n their share, and some considerable less!"

Nelia remained there three days, for there was good company, and a
two-day rain had set in between midnight and dawn on the following
morning. There was no hurry, and she was going nowhere. She had the
whole family over to supper the second night, and she ate two meals or
so with them.

The other shanty-boat, about a hundred yards down stream, was an old
man's. He had a soldier's pension, and he lived in serene restfulness,
reading General Grant's memoirs, and poring over the documents of the
Rebellion, discovering points of military interest and renewing his own
memories of his part in thirty-odd battles with Grant before Vicksburg
and down the line with the Army of the Potomac.

Nelia could have remained there indefinitely, but restlessness was in
her mind, as long as she had so much money on board her little
shanty-boat. Disbon knew so many tales of river piracy that she saw the
wisdom of settling her possessions, either at Cairo or Memphis,
whichever should prove best.

Landing against the bank just above the ferry, she walked over to Cairo
and sought for a man who had hired her father to help him hunt for wild
turkeys. He was a banker, and would certainly be the right kind of a man
to help her, if he would.

"Mr. Brankeau," she addressed him in his office, "I don't know if you
remember me, but you came hunting to the River Bottoms below St.
Genevieve, one time, and you and Father went over into Missouri, hunting
turkeys."

"Remember you?" he exclaimed. "Why--you--of course! Mrs. Carline--Nelia
Crele!"

She met his questioning gaze unflinchingly.

"I know I can trust you," she said, simply. "If you'd known Gus
Carline!"

"I knew his father," Brankeau said. "I reckon as faithless a scoundrel
as ever lived. Old man Carline left his first wife and two babies up in
Indiana--I know all about that family! I saw by the newspapers----"

"I want some railroad stocks, so I can have interest on my money," she
said by way of nature of her presence there. "When we separated, he let
me have this paper, showing he wanted me to share his fortune----"

"He was white as that?" Brankeau exclaimed, astonished at the paper
Carline had signed.

"He was that white," she replied,