XXVIII

XXVIIIWORDS AND THE "WESTWOOD"

Down on the roof, while Ramsey's mother started with the physician around the skylights for the texas, and Hugh and Gilmore conversed with the captain, Mrs. Gilmore, her hands on Ramsey, said to madame:"I want her now, to begin to make ready for tomorrow evening. My dear"—to the girl—"I've a dozen dresses that will become you better than this one.""Long?" cried Ramsey. "I'll take the lot!" She felt Hugh distantly looking and listening."We won't trade on Sunday," laughed Mrs. Gilmore; "but you mustn't"—scanning her approvingly—"ever put on a short dress again.""Ho-oh, I never will!" said Ramsey, with a toss meant for Hugh, who went by, hurrying aft to meet a newcomer. She started after him. Madame Hayle, in that direction, had gone into the sick-room, whence Ramsey's brother Julian, with barely a word to his mother, had come out. Stepping down into the narrow walk between the roofs of cabin and pantry and glancing over his shoulder upon the company about the bell, he winced at sight of his sister's attire. Yet he kept his course and was well started aft before he saw that he was being met by some one in the narrow way, and by whom but Marburg. It was that alien whom Hugh was hastening to reach and on whom Ramsey was staring. He had come up from the engine room through the steward's department, by the unguarded route which Basile's ascent had revealed, and now came face to face with a foe where there was room only for friends to meet and pass. So said the eyes of each to each, but just then a quick footfall on the cabin roof, behind and somewhat above him, caused Julian to face round and he confronted Hugh."Mr. Hayle," was Hugh's word, "what will you have, sir?""Nothing, sir, of you! What willyouhave ofme, sir?"Ramsey glided by both and halted before the exile, whose scowl vanished in a look so grateful and supplicating that her words, clearly meant to justify his presence, caught in her throat: "What will you—have, sir? My mother?—back again?—and the doctor?""Yes," he replied, and then added in German with an anguish of gesture which was ample interpretation, "yes, formymother! for my little brother! Ah, God! he is not dead! He is yet alive! His arms are as supple asthese. There is color still in his cheeks!"She stood dumb with horror. Yet she woke to action as, close beside her, she heard her brother snarl at Hugh:"I'll go where I please! Who stops me, God pity him!"She dropped nimbly from the skylights' overhang to the alien's level and with looks as beseeching as his waved him back a step. Then with the same mute entreaty she faced Julian and Hugh. But there was a ludicrous contrast, visible to all, between Hugh's phlegm and her brother's pomp, and by a flash of feminine instinct she divined the best mood with which to match it. Grimly elated, Hugh saw what was coming. Julian saw, and groaned a wearied wrath. The captain, the commodore—for the commodore had returned—the Gilmores, the Yazoo couple, the pilots overhead, all waited with lively and knowing gaze. She went limp, hid her face, swayed, sank to one knee, and filled the whole width of the narrow passage with arms and draperies, the meanwhile breaking into a laugh so wholly soliloqual that the two players became learners. But again she sprang erect and had hardly thrown her curls back from her blushing face when her mother, the bishop, and the doctor stepped from the sick-room, and madame addressed the immigrant:"Ah, ritturn, if you ple-ease. Me, I am ritturning!""Yes," chimed the bishop and the doctor; "yes, at once!" and the exile, with pleading looks to Ramsey, to the others by turn and to her again, went below. Madame and the physician began to follow."How's Lucian?" called Ramsey after them."Getting well," replied both. They passed behind the wheel-house and only the pilots knew that at its corner Madame Hayle stopped where she could still see and hear. All others kept their eyes on Julian, who was in a redder heat than ever, and on Hugh, who was addressing him in a depth of tone that amused the Gilmores almost as keenly as it did Ramsey, who had rejoined them at his back. Suddenly he faced around."If Miss Hayle," he said, "would as soon go below——"Miss Hayle sang her reply, bugled it: "She would no-ot."Hugh stepped down into her brother's path and faced him again: "You have written your father a letter——"Julian's head flew up but bent in slow avowal."To be put aboard theAntelope," pursued Hugh——The head went higher: "Well, sir?""To outrun this boat.""And—if—I—have, sir?""Why, yes," murmured the squire's brother-in-law and sister, to the Gilmores, "suppose he has?""So have I," said Hugh to Julian. He glanced up to the Yazoo couple and then to the bishop self-isolated near the sick-room door. Ramsey and the couple laughed. Hugh turned her way again: "If Miss Hayle——""She wouldn't," said Ramsey, laughing more."Well, sir!" drawled the waiting Julian, to Hugh.Hugh waved a hand toward the bishop: "That gentleman has risked his life for your sick brother.""Yes," said Ramsey. The bishop scowled up the river. Julian scowled at Hugh."Well, sir?" he once more challenged."He was told he was wanted as a minister," said Hugh."Well, sir?""He was wanted merely to get your letter off secretly.""You lie!""Oh!" sighed the Yazoo pair. Ramsey shrank upon Mrs. Gilmore."Not at all," said a quiet voice overhead and the eyes of Julian, blazing upward, met Watson's blazing down."Come," said the player's wife to Ramsey, "come away.""I won't," tearfully laughed Ramsey, and Mrs. Gilmore and the squire's sister had to laugh with her."The lie," said Hugh, "will keep. Your letter is such that the bishop declines to touch it."The bishop swelled. Julian recoiled and, glancing behind him, confronted his mother."My son," she began, but he whirled back to Hugh."You keyhole spy!" he wailed; "you eavesdropping viper!"Ramsey came tiptoeing along the edge of the pantry roof to light down between them but he imperiously motioned her off, still glaring at Hugh and gnawing his lip with chagrin. "Oh, never mind!" was all he could choke out; "never you mind!" He ceased again, to catch what Hugh was replying to him. Said Hugh:"I'll take your letter and send it with my own.""No, sir! No, you grovelling sneak!""Mais, yass!" called Madame Hayle from her place, and Ramsey laughed from hers, but a new voice arrested every one's attention. The bishop wheeled round to it with an exclamation of dismay that was echoed even by Julian. In the sick-room door stood Lucian, half dressed and feebly clinging to the jamb."Let him do it, Jule!" he cried in a tremulous thin voice. "Take the whelp at his word! Don't you see? Don't you see, Jule? We'll have him in a nine hole. It'll be hell for him if he puts it through and worse if he slinks it!" He tried to put off the bishop's sustaining arm.A light of discernment filled Julian's face. There was no time to ponder. He had always trusted Lucian for the cunninger insight and did it now though Lucian lay in the bishop's arms limp and senseless. He drew forth the letter. Gayly stooping over the skylights Ramsey reached for it and passed it to Hugh. Julian sprang up to the bishop, who had borne Lucian into the sick-room and now filled its door again, waving a cheerful reassurance."A mere swoon," said the bishop; "all right again.""It may be all right up there," the squire's sister began to say to the actor's wife—and hushed. But Ramsey had heard, as she watched her mother hurry below to the young Marburg brother lying as limp and faintly pink in death as her brother up here in life; heard, and thought of the perils in store for Hugh and his kin and her and hers unless this sweet, wise mother could charm them away as sunlight charms away pestilence. Mr. Gilmore called her:"Come, we've lots to do."But how could one come just then? A slight turn of the boat's head was putting Natchez Island close on her larboard bow and, seven miles away, bringing hazily into sight Natchez herself, both on her bluffs and "under-the-hill." Nay, more; abreast theVotaresswas another fine boat. TheWestwood, she was named. Her going was beautiful, yet theVotaresswas gradually passing her. The Yazoo pair knew her well. When they made salute toward two men who stood near her forward skylights, one of them returned it."Why should he be so solemn?" asked the wife."Why shouldn't he?" laughed Ramsey."Because he's a mere passenger, on his wedding tour.""Humph!" said Ramsey. "Weddings are solemn things. Is that other man the captain?" she asked the husband."No, I regret to say, he's only her first clerk.""Why should you regret to say it?" inquired the girl; but the wife, too, had a question:"Do you think there's anything wrong?""N-no, oh, no."TheWestwood'sclerk made a sign to Captain Courteney. The captain glanced up to Watson, and the two boats, still at full speed, began to draw sidewise together. But Ramsey's liveliest interest was in theWestwood'screw, who, far below about her capstan, were paying their compliments to the newer, larger, speedier boat in song and refrain with stately wavings and dippings of ragged hats and naked black arms. Now the boats' guards almost touched and their commanders spoke so quietly together that she did not hear their words. But she noted the regretful air with which John Courteney shook his head to theWestwood'sclerk and then to the passenger, and theWestwoodbegan again to drop behind. Hugh came near, paused, and glanced around."Looking for the commodore?" she asked."I thought you went down with Mrs. Gilmore," he replied, "to rehearse your part in the play.""Commodore's down on the lower deck," she said; "freight deck—with mom-a—and the bishop."Hugh showed astonishment. "The bishop?""Yes, mom-a made him go." She laughed. "Some of the sick folks down there are Protestants and were threatening to turn Catholic. Is anybody sick aboard theWestwood?""No.""Then where's her captain?"Hugh made no reply but to meet her steady gaze with his own till she asked in a subdued voice: "Cholera?"Hugh nodded. Each knew the other was aware of the song that floated up after them from the boat behind."What did the bridegroom want?" asked the girl."Wanted to give us a thousand dollars to take his bride—with him or without him—aboard theVotaress.""But when he heard how much worse off we are—" prompted she."Yes.""But, Mr. Hugh——""Yes?""Anyhow, this boat hasn't got that boat's trouble!""No," said Hugh, and knew they were both thinking of his father. Together they stood hearkening to the last of theWestwood'ssong:"'Ef you git dah befo' I do—O, high-low!—Jest tell 'em I'm a-comin' too—John's gone to high-low!'"

Down on the roof, while Ramsey's mother started with the physician around the skylights for the texas, and Hugh and Gilmore conversed with the captain, Mrs. Gilmore, her hands on Ramsey, said to madame:

"I want her now, to begin to make ready for tomorrow evening. My dear"—to the girl—"I've a dozen dresses that will become you better than this one."

"Long?" cried Ramsey. "I'll take the lot!" She felt Hugh distantly looking and listening.

"We won't trade on Sunday," laughed Mrs. Gilmore; "but you mustn't"—scanning her approvingly—"ever put on a short dress again."

"Ho-oh, I never will!" said Ramsey, with a toss meant for Hugh, who went by, hurrying aft to meet a newcomer. She started after him. Madame Hayle, in that direction, had gone into the sick-room, whence Ramsey's brother Julian, with barely a word to his mother, had come out. Stepping down into the narrow walk between the roofs of cabin and pantry and glancing over his shoulder upon the company about the bell, he winced at sight of his sister's attire. Yet he kept his course and was well started aft before he saw that he was being met by some one in the narrow way, and by whom but Marburg. It was that alien whom Hugh was hastening to reach and on whom Ramsey was staring. He had come up from the engine room through the steward's department, by the unguarded route which Basile's ascent had revealed, and now came face to face with a foe where there was room only for friends to meet and pass. So said the eyes of each to each, but just then a quick footfall on the cabin roof, behind and somewhat above him, caused Julian to face round and he confronted Hugh.

"Mr. Hayle," was Hugh's word, "what will you have, sir?"

"Nothing, sir, of you! What willyouhave ofme, sir?"

Ramsey glided by both and halted before the exile, whose scowl vanished in a look so grateful and supplicating that her words, clearly meant to justify his presence, caught in her throat: "What will you—have, sir? My mother?—back again?—and the doctor?"

"Yes," he replied, and then added in German with an anguish of gesture which was ample interpretation, "yes, formymother! for my little brother! Ah, God! he is not dead! He is yet alive! His arms are as supple asthese. There is color still in his cheeks!"

She stood dumb with horror. Yet she woke to action as, close beside her, she heard her brother snarl at Hugh:

"I'll go where I please! Who stops me, God pity him!"

She dropped nimbly from the skylights' overhang to the alien's level and with looks as beseeching as his waved him back a step. Then with the same mute entreaty she faced Julian and Hugh. But there was a ludicrous contrast, visible to all, between Hugh's phlegm and her brother's pomp, and by a flash of feminine instinct she divined the best mood with which to match it. Grimly elated, Hugh saw what was coming. Julian saw, and groaned a wearied wrath. The captain, the commodore—for the commodore had returned—the Gilmores, the Yazoo couple, the pilots overhead, all waited with lively and knowing gaze. She went limp, hid her face, swayed, sank to one knee, and filled the whole width of the narrow passage with arms and draperies, the meanwhile breaking into a laugh so wholly soliloqual that the two players became learners. But again she sprang erect and had hardly thrown her curls back from her blushing face when her mother, the bishop, and the doctor stepped from the sick-room, and madame addressed the immigrant:

"Ah, ritturn, if you ple-ease. Me, I am ritturning!"

"Yes," chimed the bishop and the doctor; "yes, at once!" and the exile, with pleading looks to Ramsey, to the others by turn and to her again, went below. Madame and the physician began to follow.

"How's Lucian?" called Ramsey after them.

"Getting well," replied both. They passed behind the wheel-house and only the pilots knew that at its corner Madame Hayle stopped where she could still see and hear. All others kept their eyes on Julian, who was in a redder heat than ever, and on Hugh, who was addressing him in a depth of tone that amused the Gilmores almost as keenly as it did Ramsey, who had rejoined them at his back. Suddenly he faced around.

"If Miss Hayle," he said, "would as soon go below——"

Miss Hayle sang her reply, bugled it: "She would no-ot."

Hugh stepped down into her brother's path and faced him again: "You have written your father a letter——"

Julian's head flew up but bent in slow avowal.

"To be put aboard theAntelope," pursued Hugh——

The head went higher: "Well, sir?"

"To outrun this boat."

"And—if—I—have, sir?"

"Why, yes," murmured the squire's brother-in-law and sister, to the Gilmores, "suppose he has?"

"So have I," said Hugh to Julian. He glanced up to the Yazoo couple and then to the bishop self-isolated near the sick-room door. Ramsey and the couple laughed. Hugh turned her way again: "If Miss Hayle——"

"She wouldn't," said Ramsey, laughing more.

"Well, sir!" drawled the waiting Julian, to Hugh.

Hugh waved a hand toward the bishop: "That gentleman has risked his life for your sick brother."

"Yes," said Ramsey. The bishop scowled up the river. Julian scowled at Hugh.

"Well, sir?" he once more challenged.

"He was told he was wanted as a minister," said Hugh.

"Well, sir?"

"He was wanted merely to get your letter off secretly."

"You lie!"

"Oh!" sighed the Yazoo pair. Ramsey shrank upon Mrs. Gilmore.

"Not at all," said a quiet voice overhead and the eyes of Julian, blazing upward, met Watson's blazing down.

"Come," said the player's wife to Ramsey, "come away."

"I won't," tearfully laughed Ramsey, and Mrs. Gilmore and the squire's sister had to laugh with her.

"The lie," said Hugh, "will keep. Your letter is such that the bishop declines to touch it."

The bishop swelled. Julian recoiled and, glancing behind him, confronted his mother.

"My son," she began, but he whirled back to Hugh.

"You keyhole spy!" he wailed; "you eavesdropping viper!"

Ramsey came tiptoeing along the edge of the pantry roof to light down between them but he imperiously motioned her off, still glaring at Hugh and gnawing his lip with chagrin. "Oh, never mind!" was all he could choke out; "never you mind!" He ceased again, to catch what Hugh was replying to him. Said Hugh:

"I'll take your letter and send it with my own."

"No, sir! No, you grovelling sneak!"

"Mais, yass!" called Madame Hayle from her place, and Ramsey laughed from hers, but a new voice arrested every one's attention. The bishop wheeled round to it with an exclamation of dismay that was echoed even by Julian. In the sick-room door stood Lucian, half dressed and feebly clinging to the jamb.

"Let him do it, Jule!" he cried in a tremulous thin voice. "Take the whelp at his word! Don't you see? Don't you see, Jule? We'll have him in a nine hole. It'll be hell for him if he puts it through and worse if he slinks it!" He tried to put off the bishop's sustaining arm.

A light of discernment filled Julian's face. There was no time to ponder. He had always trusted Lucian for the cunninger insight and did it now though Lucian lay in the bishop's arms limp and senseless. He drew forth the letter. Gayly stooping over the skylights Ramsey reached for it and passed it to Hugh. Julian sprang up to the bishop, who had borne Lucian into the sick-room and now filled its door again, waving a cheerful reassurance.

"A mere swoon," said the bishop; "all right again."

"It may be all right up there," the squire's sister began to say to the actor's wife—and hushed. But Ramsey had heard, as she watched her mother hurry below to the young Marburg brother lying as limp and faintly pink in death as her brother up here in life; heard, and thought of the perils in store for Hugh and his kin and her and hers unless this sweet, wise mother could charm them away as sunlight charms away pestilence. Mr. Gilmore called her:

"Come, we've lots to do."

But how could one come just then? A slight turn of the boat's head was putting Natchez Island close on her larboard bow and, seven miles away, bringing hazily into sight Natchez herself, both on her bluffs and "under-the-hill." Nay, more; abreast theVotaresswas another fine boat. TheWestwood, she was named. Her going was beautiful, yet theVotaresswas gradually passing her. The Yazoo pair knew her well. When they made salute toward two men who stood near her forward skylights, one of them returned it.

"Why should he be so solemn?" asked the wife.

"Why shouldn't he?" laughed Ramsey.

"Because he's a mere passenger, on his wedding tour."

"Humph!" said Ramsey. "Weddings are solemn things. Is that other man the captain?" she asked the husband.

"No, I regret to say, he's only her first clerk."

"Why should you regret to say it?" inquired the girl; but the wife, too, had a question:

"Do you think there's anything wrong?"

"N-no, oh, no."

TheWestwood'sclerk made a sign to Captain Courteney. The captain glanced up to Watson, and the two boats, still at full speed, began to draw sidewise together. But Ramsey's liveliest interest was in theWestwood'screw, who, far below about her capstan, were paying their compliments to the newer, larger, speedier boat in song and refrain with stately wavings and dippings of ragged hats and naked black arms. Now the boats' guards almost touched and their commanders spoke so quietly together that she did not hear their words. But she noted the regretful air with which John Courteney shook his head to theWestwood'sclerk and then to the passenger, and theWestwoodbegan again to drop behind. Hugh came near, paused, and glanced around.

"Looking for the commodore?" she asked.

"I thought you went down with Mrs. Gilmore," he replied, "to rehearse your part in the play."

"Commodore's down on the lower deck," she said; "freight deck—with mom-a—and the bishop."

Hugh showed astonishment. "The bishop?"

"Yes, mom-a made him go." She laughed. "Some of the sick folks down there are Protestants and were threatening to turn Catholic. Is anybody sick aboard theWestwood?"

"No."

"Then where's her captain?"

Hugh made no reply but to meet her steady gaze with his own till she asked in a subdued voice: "Cholera?"

Hugh nodded. Each knew the other was aware of the song that floated up after them from the boat behind.

"What did the bridegroom want?" asked the girl.

"Wanted to give us a thousand dollars to take his bride—with him or without him—aboard theVotaress."

"But when he heard how much worse off we are—" prompted she.

"Yes."

"But, Mr. Hugh——"

"Yes?"

"Anyhow, this boat hasn't got that boat's trouble!"

"No," said Hugh, and knew they were both thinking of his father. Together they stood hearkening to the last of theWestwood'ssong:

"'Ef you git dah befo' I do—O, high-low!—Jest tell 'em I'm a-comin' too—John's gone to high-low!'"

"'Ef you git dah befo' I do—O, high-low!—Jest tell 'em I'm a-comin' too—John's gone to high-low!'"

"'Ef you git dah befo' I do—

O, high-low!—

Jest tell 'em I'm a-comin' too—

John's gone to high-low!'"

XXIXSTUDYING THE RIVER—TOGETHER

They did not tie to the wharf-boat at Natchez. At that stage of water there was good landing a few yards below, where the sandy bank was not too wet to walk across to a higher one which floods never reached, close under the bluff. Here had left the boat half a dozen passengers including the judge and his sister. So good-by to that lady. Never wouldshehave set foot on theVotaresshad she dreamed she was to be "dumped off" on such a spot. She believed that girl of Gideon Hayle's had laughed as she went up the perilous stage plank. And really there is no proof to the contrary.Another incident awoke in Ramsey no mirth. Yet she never forgot it. It occurred on the upper, greener level that overlooked, across the river, a great sweep of Louisiana lowlands at that moment bathed in a golden sunset. The same light fell upon the incident itself—the Marburg lad's burial; fell upon the bent mother standing behind the priest and between her elder son and Madame Hayle, surrounded by her fellow exiles, many of whom, with faces hidden like hers, wept more for her bereavement than they had earlier done for their own. So the rude pine coffin descended into the unhallowed ground. From the hurricane-deck Ramsey looked down with wet eyes to the meek mourner returning aboard on the arm of her Otto. Thinking how easily in the play of chance the lost brother might have been saved and her saved brother lost, and recalling the plight of theWestwood, she suddenly realized that no one could tell who might go next—"to high-low." Otto Marburg, glancing up, saw her tears, and would have paused but for the sacred burden on his arm.At the same time, for eyes, even wet eyes, as lively as Ramsey's there were livelier things to see. Hugh had gone ashore and up to the wharf-boat, crossed it, and boarded the busyAntelopewith several letters in hand, the twins' letter among them. Said the squire's brother-in-law:"That boy must know the danger to him there is in that document," and the planter of Milliken's Bend agreed.So did their wives. There was "everything in it he wouldn't want there and nothing he would want."He was doing the "brave thing," they all said, and the wives called it too brave. The brave thing, they thought, "ran a slim chance against Hayle's twins.""My dear ladies," said the planter, "it runs the only chance he has. The brave thing is the only thing those two young fire-eaters have any respect for." He stopped short; Ramsey had overheard. Yet she kept a pretty front."Why do you call him 'that boy'?" she laughingly asked."Well, really, because," replied the planter, twinkling, "he's so much more than a boy. Don't you think so?"She gave him a sidelong glance, twitched her curls, and looked down ashore. Her mother was there with the "boy's" grandfather. They were getting into a rickety hack. Now Hugh joined them from theAntelope, and they went whipping up the steep road across the face of the bluff and into the "stuck-up" Natchez atop the hill. She guessed their errand.Meantime theWestwoodhad reached the wharf-boat, put her bridal pair aboard theAntelope, and backed out again so promptly that as theAntelopecast off and started after her she had rounded Marengo Bend and was showing only her smoke across Cowpen Point. And now reappeared Madame Hayle, the commodore, and Hugh, bringing with them—welcome sight—two sisters of charity. The moment they touched the lower deck theVotaress, with John Courteney on her roof, backed away, and soon, in the first bend above, any eye could plainly see theWestwood, still less than four miles off across country though eight by the river, with theAntelopefour miles behind her and four ahead of theVotaress. Said the pilot, Ned, to Ramsey, pulling the wheel down to head into the crimson west:"Four 'n' four's eight, ain't it? Used to be. Can't tell what'll change on this river. When Lake Concordia, over here in Louisiana, was part o' the river, an' Vidal's Island, in its middle, was in the river, this bend wa'n't jest eight mile' round, it wuz twenty. These arethebends. F'om here to Cairo we got to run one etarnal wriggle o' six hund'd 'n' eighty mile' to make three hund'd 'n' seventy.""Oh, I'm glad of it! At least—ain't—ain't you?"He shook his head: "Not this run." The supper bell rang and Ramsey fled, but he repeated: "No, not this run!" He turned and looked back upon Natchez bluff far behind the steamer's wake. "I wished every last Hayle on this blessed boat wuz off o' her an' 'top o' you!"On that bluff, in colonial days, had stood Fort Rosalie, whose dire tragedy Ramsey, down in the cabin, found Gilmore, at table, recounting to Hugh and others: murder of its French settlers by Natchez Indians and the extermination of the Natchez tribe by the French from New Orleans. He was brief, and for a good ending went on to recall his own first sight of the spot, before the time of steamboats, when Natchez was a village; how, as his low broadhorn came drifting down around this point close above it, the bold rise swung into view, crowned with pines, its lower parts evergreen with the bay magnolia, and its precipitous front lighted up, as now, with the last beams of day. He made it seem so fair and important that Ramsey's native pride and a shame of her previous blindness almost drove her from the board to take a last look at it from the stern guards; but she was again in her mother's seat and again very hungry. He was good company to every one, the actor; always acting, yet always as natural as if acting and nature were one; a quiet education to Hugh, an unfailing joy to his wife, and both to Ramsey.After supper the players got out an old two-act play for the next evening's entertainment. They cast Hugh and Ramsey for two small rôles, and for two larger ones found a young brother and sister—of Napoleon—at the mouth of the Arkansas—who would have just time to act them before leaving the boat. Supper had prevented its guests from seeing theVotaressturn Giles's Bend and Rifle Point and meet another boat as glittering as she and pass Lake Saint John and Fairchild's Bend—where the river widened to three miles about Fairchild's double island. Wherefore the indulgent Gilmores, on Ramsey's pleading, elected to coach first the brother and sister—of Napoleon—letting Hugh ascend to the starlight of the roof and Ramsey follow attended once more by old Joy.She met Hugh at the foot of the pilot-house steps. "We are postponed!" she said, "you and me—I!""Yes. Do you know for what?""Yes, because those other two parts are so much bigger than ours, and because—I d'n' know—I believe they think I'm sleepy—ha, ha! I'm glad, forIwant to study thisriver, all I can, day and night. And you—must, mustn't you?""Yes," he said, which was all he was to say in the play.Half-way up the steps she halted: "You're to be a captain on it yourself as soon as you're fit, ain't you?""If that time ever comes.""Phew! how modest" She stared an instant, turned her back, clasped the rail, and with her forehead on her arms laughed till Hugh was weary—not necessarily long.He spoke: "Here come theWestwoodand theAntelope.""Where?" She glanced round, sprang up the steps, and soon was making room for him beside her at a larboard window behind Watson. Looking thence across the long, slim neck of Cole's Point they saw the two boats coming back westward in the upper reach of the fourteen-mile eastern loop they were running to make two miles into the north. Now theWestwoodpassed and now theAntelope, their skylights glinting like fireflies through the intervening tree tops, and Watson showed how to tell them apart by night. Presently they turned north again and vanished, leaving the mighty stream to its three students."It'll cut off this whole fourteen mile' some day," said Watson; but the other two, in their dim nook, remained silent. He knew that sort of silence. When Ramsey by and by spoke, her words were to Hugh exclusively and in undertone."TheQuakeress—Oh, I didn't mean——!""That's all right," said Hugh. "TheQuakeress——!""Oh, I meant theAntelope! She'll soon be in the lead again?""Yes.""With both those letters.""Both.""Ain't you glad I didn't mean theQuakeress?""No.""Well, you're glad I didn't mean Phyllis, ain't you?""No.""Would you really be willing to tell me about Phyllis?""I would.""You wasn't willing—before—was you?—were you?""No.""What's changed your mind?""Lawd, missy!" sighed the forgotten Joy.But Ramsey insisted: "What's changed it?""You, chiefly.""I haven't," very quietly said the girl."You have."Ramsey glanced cautiously at Watson, but the pilot's eyes were a league ahead. Hers returned to Hugh. "Wasn't it my brothers changed your mind—the twins?""They helped."She looked him over absently: "I love my brothers.""I don't," said Hugh.She stared again and slowly remarked: "You haven't got to.... You're powerful queer, ain't you?""Not by choice.""I'm queer. Wish I wasn't—wa'n't—weren't—but I am.""Yes," said Hugh, "you are."She tilted her chin, stepped to Watson's side, and called down over the breast-board to the Gilmores, who had finished with their two pupils for a time and had taken chairs with a newly found young married pair on the texas roof:"Oho, down there!""Oho!" the group answered."Do you want us to stay up here?" asked Ramsey. "'Cause if you do we'll come right down. Or if you'd rather we'd come down we'll stay up here!" It was a new note.The players laughed. "It's the long dress says that," they observed to the other pair."It certain'y is," replied they; which is Southern form for "probably."

They did not tie to the wharf-boat at Natchez. At that stage of water there was good landing a few yards below, where the sandy bank was not too wet to walk across to a higher one which floods never reached, close under the bluff. Here had left the boat half a dozen passengers including the judge and his sister. So good-by to that lady. Never wouldshehave set foot on theVotaresshad she dreamed she was to be "dumped off" on such a spot. She believed that girl of Gideon Hayle's had laughed as she went up the perilous stage plank. And really there is no proof to the contrary.

Another incident awoke in Ramsey no mirth. Yet she never forgot it. It occurred on the upper, greener level that overlooked, across the river, a great sweep of Louisiana lowlands at that moment bathed in a golden sunset. The same light fell upon the incident itself—the Marburg lad's burial; fell upon the bent mother standing behind the priest and between her elder son and Madame Hayle, surrounded by her fellow exiles, many of whom, with faces hidden like hers, wept more for her bereavement than they had earlier done for their own. So the rude pine coffin descended into the unhallowed ground. From the hurricane-deck Ramsey looked down with wet eyes to the meek mourner returning aboard on the arm of her Otto. Thinking how easily in the play of chance the lost brother might have been saved and her saved brother lost, and recalling the plight of theWestwood, she suddenly realized that no one could tell who might go next—"to high-low." Otto Marburg, glancing up, saw her tears, and would have paused but for the sacred burden on his arm.

At the same time, for eyes, even wet eyes, as lively as Ramsey's there were livelier things to see. Hugh had gone ashore and up to the wharf-boat, crossed it, and boarded the busyAntelopewith several letters in hand, the twins' letter among them. Said the squire's brother-in-law:

"That boy must know the danger to him there is in that document," and the planter of Milliken's Bend agreed.

So did their wives. There was "everything in it he wouldn't want there and nothing he would want."

He was doing the "brave thing," they all said, and the wives called it too brave. The brave thing, they thought, "ran a slim chance against Hayle's twins."

"My dear ladies," said the planter, "it runs the only chance he has. The brave thing is the only thing those two young fire-eaters have any respect for." He stopped short; Ramsey had overheard. Yet she kept a pretty front.

"Why do you call him 'that boy'?" she laughingly asked.

"Well, really, because," replied the planter, twinkling, "he's so much more than a boy. Don't you think so?"

She gave him a sidelong glance, twitched her curls, and looked down ashore. Her mother was there with the "boy's" grandfather. They were getting into a rickety hack. Now Hugh joined them from theAntelope, and they went whipping up the steep road across the face of the bluff and into the "stuck-up" Natchez atop the hill. She guessed their errand.

Meantime theWestwoodhad reached the wharf-boat, put her bridal pair aboard theAntelope, and backed out again so promptly that as theAntelopecast off and started after her she had rounded Marengo Bend and was showing only her smoke across Cowpen Point. And now reappeared Madame Hayle, the commodore, and Hugh, bringing with them—welcome sight—two sisters of charity. The moment they touched the lower deck theVotaress, with John Courteney on her roof, backed away, and soon, in the first bend above, any eye could plainly see theWestwood, still less than four miles off across country though eight by the river, with theAntelopefour miles behind her and four ahead of theVotaress. Said the pilot, Ned, to Ramsey, pulling the wheel down to head into the crimson west:

"Four 'n' four's eight, ain't it? Used to be. Can't tell what'll change on this river. When Lake Concordia, over here in Louisiana, was part o' the river, an' Vidal's Island, in its middle, was in the river, this bend wa'n't jest eight mile' round, it wuz twenty. These arethebends. F'om here to Cairo we got to run one etarnal wriggle o' six hund'd 'n' eighty mile' to make three hund'd 'n' seventy."

"Oh, I'm glad of it! At least—ain't—ain't you?"

He shook his head: "Not this run." The supper bell rang and Ramsey fled, but he repeated: "No, not this run!" He turned and looked back upon Natchez bluff far behind the steamer's wake. "I wished every last Hayle on this blessed boat wuz off o' her an' 'top o' you!"

On that bluff, in colonial days, had stood Fort Rosalie, whose dire tragedy Ramsey, down in the cabin, found Gilmore, at table, recounting to Hugh and others: murder of its French settlers by Natchez Indians and the extermination of the Natchez tribe by the French from New Orleans. He was brief, and for a good ending went on to recall his own first sight of the spot, before the time of steamboats, when Natchez was a village; how, as his low broadhorn came drifting down around this point close above it, the bold rise swung into view, crowned with pines, its lower parts evergreen with the bay magnolia, and its precipitous front lighted up, as now, with the last beams of day. He made it seem so fair and important that Ramsey's native pride and a shame of her previous blindness almost drove her from the board to take a last look at it from the stern guards; but she was again in her mother's seat and again very hungry. He was good company to every one, the actor; always acting, yet always as natural as if acting and nature were one; a quiet education to Hugh, an unfailing joy to his wife, and both to Ramsey.

After supper the players got out an old two-act play for the next evening's entertainment. They cast Hugh and Ramsey for two small rôles, and for two larger ones found a young brother and sister—of Napoleon—at the mouth of the Arkansas—who would have just time to act them before leaving the boat. Supper had prevented its guests from seeing theVotaressturn Giles's Bend and Rifle Point and meet another boat as glittering as she and pass Lake Saint John and Fairchild's Bend—where the river widened to three miles about Fairchild's double island. Wherefore the indulgent Gilmores, on Ramsey's pleading, elected to coach first the brother and sister—of Napoleon—letting Hugh ascend to the starlight of the roof and Ramsey follow attended once more by old Joy.

She met Hugh at the foot of the pilot-house steps. "We are postponed!" she said, "you and me—I!"

"Yes. Do you know for what?"

"Yes, because those other two parts are so much bigger than ours, and because—I d'n' know—I believe they think I'm sleepy—ha, ha! I'm glad, forIwant to study thisriver, all I can, day and night. And you—must, mustn't you?"

"Yes," he said, which was all he was to say in the play.

Half-way up the steps she halted: "You're to be a captain on it yourself as soon as you're fit, ain't you?"

"If that time ever comes."

"Phew! how modest" She stared an instant, turned her back, clasped the rail, and with her forehead on her arms laughed till Hugh was weary—not necessarily long.

He spoke: "Here come theWestwoodand theAntelope."

"Where?" She glanced round, sprang up the steps, and soon was making room for him beside her at a larboard window behind Watson. Looking thence across the long, slim neck of Cole's Point they saw the two boats coming back westward in the upper reach of the fourteen-mile eastern loop they were running to make two miles into the north. Now theWestwoodpassed and now theAntelope, their skylights glinting like fireflies through the intervening tree tops, and Watson showed how to tell them apart by night. Presently they turned north again and vanished, leaving the mighty stream to its three students.

"It'll cut off this whole fourteen mile' some day," said Watson; but the other two, in their dim nook, remained silent. He knew that sort of silence. When Ramsey by and by spoke, her words were to Hugh exclusively and in undertone.

"TheQuakeress—Oh, I didn't mean——!"

"That's all right," said Hugh. "TheQuakeress——!"

"Oh, I meant theAntelope! She'll soon be in the lead again?"

"Yes."

"With both those letters."

"Both."

"Ain't you glad I didn't mean theQuakeress?"

"No."

"Well, you're glad I didn't mean Phyllis, ain't you?"

"No."

"Would you really be willing to tell me about Phyllis?"

"I would."

"You wasn't willing—before—was you?—were you?"

"No."

"What's changed your mind?"

"Lawd, missy!" sighed the forgotten Joy.

But Ramsey insisted: "What's changed it?"

"You, chiefly."

"I haven't," very quietly said the girl.

"You have."

Ramsey glanced cautiously at Watson, but the pilot's eyes were a league ahead. Hers returned to Hugh. "Wasn't it my brothers changed your mind—the twins?"

"They helped."

She looked him over absently: "I love my brothers."

"I don't," said Hugh.

She stared again and slowly remarked: "You haven't got to.... You're powerful queer, ain't you?"

"Not by choice."

"I'm queer. Wish I wasn't—wa'n't—weren't—but I am."

"Yes," said Hugh, "you are."

She tilted her chin, stepped to Watson's side, and called down over the breast-board to the Gilmores, who had finished with their two pupils for a time and had taken chairs with a newly found young married pair on the texas roof:

"Oho, down there!"

"Oho!" the group answered.

"Do you want us to stay up here?" asked Ramsey. "'Cause if you do we'll come right down. Or if you'd rather we'd come down we'll stay up here!" It was a new note.

The players laughed. "It's the long dress says that," they observed to the other pair.

"It certain'y is," replied they; which is Southern form for "probably."

XXXPHYLLIS AGAIN

About eleven o'clock that same Sunday evening theVotaress, at full speed, was in a part of the river whose remarkable character sustained the son of John Courteney and the daughter of Gideon Hayle in the theory that their interest in it was all that had brought them to—all that detained them in—the unlighted pilothouse, on the visitors' bench, beside Watson. Below, the passengers were for the most part once more in slumber. The exhorter had loudly sung himself to sleep:"'Mahch-ign thoo Im-madn-uedl's groudndToe fahr-eh wordlds odn high.'"Madame Hayle was in her stateroom and berth, deep in sleep under the weight of her toils and assured by the players that Ramsey should go to bed when they did. Basile, too, slept, but talked and tossed in his sleep, while old Joy, sent to him by Ramsey and the Gilmores, crouched outside his door and dozed with an ear against it. The Yazoo squire, his children, his sister, her husband, the Vicksburgers, and they of Milliken's Bend, purposing to be called up an hour before day to leave the boat at their proper landings, had "retired" early, saying fond good-bys and hoping to meet every one again. The ladies had astonished Ramsey with kisses, given, doubtless, she thought, because her father was a hero and her mother a saint. The squire's brother-in-law had assured her that her brothers, all three—as Southern boys always, or almost always, did—would come out all right—every way; but on being asked for details he had slipped away to give his De Bow to the commodore and his last good-by to Hugh.The actor and his wife, however, were as broad awake as Watson. Loving the lone starry hours for the hours' own starry sake and having for Hugh and Ramsey a certain zeal unconfessed even to each other, they were yet in view from the pilot's wheel and visitors' bench at this hour of eleven, staying up as willingly as nightingales with the young husband and wife who had agreed with them that somebody's mental radius "certain'y had" lengthened as suddenly as her gown.This young pair were expecting to go ashore within the next half-hour at "New Carthage," a city of seven houses, nearly opposite another of equal pride called Palmyra, and some four miles above the head of Hurricane Island, whose foot theVotaresswas then passing. They and the Gilmores were still down at the forward edge of the texas roof, the players finding the Carthaginians very attractive: fluent on morals, cuisine, manners, steamboats, the turf, fashions, the chase; voluble on the burdensomeness of the slave to his master, the blessedness of the master to his slave; but sore to the touch on politics and religion—with their religion quite innocently adjusted to their politics—and promptly going hard aground on any allusion to history, travel, the poets, statistics, architecture, ornithology, art, music, myths, memoirs, Europe, Asia, Africa, homœopathy, or phrenology. It entertained the players just to see how many things the happy lovers knew nothing about and to hear them state in some new form, each time they backed off a sand-bar of their own ignorance, that they had seen the world, sucked the orange, yet found no spot of earth so perfect to live in as New Carthage.The briefest sittings at such entertainment had been enough for Hugh, too much for Ramsey, and had driven them back, twice and thrice, to that fairer world on high in the pilot-house, where they could study the river undistracted. There and thence, now together, now apart, they had gone and come all through Watson's watch, moved by Hugh's duties or her caprice. Their each new meeting had been by accident, but it is odd how often accidents can occur—"at that stage o' the game," thought the kind pilot, and on each recurrence he noticed that they had got a bit farther on in the story of Phyllis."How long is this island, Mr. Watson?" inquired Ramsey, as if islands were all she was sitting up for."Two mile' 'n' a half. D'd you ask me that before? I don't hear much behind me if it ain't hove right at me." Stalest device of the sentimentalist—the self-sacrificing lie! But Watson cared not for its staleness if it might promote the game. And the game, though as wanderingly as the river, went on. Without strict order of time, now on the bench, now on the roof, early and late, here is how it went:"You're not afraid of my brothers, are you? I'm not.""I'm afraid for them. And for my father and grandfather. And for your father and your mother.""Good gracious!" laughed Ramsey, then mused, and then asked: "Ain't you afraid for me?"Hugh said nothing, and thenceforth her tone grew more maidenly though her words remained childlike enough."I know why you want to tell me about Phyllis," she added more softly. "You think if you don't my brothers will.""They don't know the facts," murmured Hugh."Don't they think they do? And ain't that the trouble?""Yes." Hugh thought her insight surprising, while she enjoyed the spiritual largeness she fancied she saw in his immobile features. "Yes," he repeated, "they think they do; that's the trouble, much of it.""How do you know they don't?""By what they believe and by what I know.""How do you know you know?""By my own eyes and Phyllis's own lips.""Would she tell you things she never told any one else?""Yes, things she never dared tell any one else."Ramsey pondered, laughed, and pondered and laughed again: "Why, most of that time you was—you were—nothing but a little toddler. Didn't she love you?""She hated me."Ramsey flinched but quickly laughed a bright unbelief to the youth's face, a face which might as well have been a wood-carving. "Oh," she cried, "how ridiculous!""She used to flog me, cruelly."Ramsey gasped: "And you never told? Oh, why—why——?""She said she'd kill me—and my mother. And she'd have done it, somehow.""But she's been dead ten years!""Has she?""Why, of course! Wasn't she on theQuakeresswhen——?""So was I."Ramsey flinched worse and stared away with lips apart, wondering if that was what gave him that look."But Phyllis," she resumed, "was lost.""Was she?""Why ... wasn't she? Mammy Joy says my uncle—in the blazing pilot-house—did you know my uncle Dan?""Yes. That night, half an hour before the burning——""Oh! was it at night?""Yes. I was sitting with Phyllis, behind him, with him at the wheel, as we're sitting now behind Mr. Watson.""Uncle Dan didn't hate you, did he?""No, indeed.""Then why didn't you tell him about Phyllis? He was her master, you know.""I did. He wormed it out of me. He was like you—in some things."The questioner flashed and stared but then dropped her eyes. "Did he—have red curls?""Yes, redder than yours.""Humph!" ... She mused.... "I'm tired here. Let's go down by the Gilmores and walk—'thortships!"They went. "Well?—about Phyllis? What did she whip you for? Being bad?""Bad or good was all one to Phyllis.""Wasn't—weren't—weren't you ever bad, Mr. Hugh?""Frequently.""How were you bad?—steal jam?—eat green plums?""Yes; had fights, went in swimming—in snake holes——""D'd you tease your sisters?—pull their hair?—let the sawdust out o' their dolls?""Yes, yes, all that.""Hmm! that's nothing. Basile and I—Ain't you going on? Of course, if you don't want to I—I shan't worm. Why did Phyllis—oh, pshaw!"With the exclamation came such one-sided mirth that Mrs. Gilmore looked round. But her husband said there would never be anything to look round for while "that laugh" kept its quality.Presently Hugh found himself murmurously "going on" and Ramsey listening. It was a great moment in both lives. If we cannot see it so, no matter; but in still depths of perception below all formulated thought both the youth and the girl were aware, separately, that the story of Phyllis was not the largest fruit of the hour.Phyllis, Hugh said, had not hated him alone. In her heart had burned a pure flame of wrath against every member—save one—of the fair race to which she belonged by three-fourths of her blood but by not one word of human law. Wronged for the race she disclaimed, she hated the race that disclaimed her. Hated even the mothers of Hugh and Ramsey, who abhorred slavery, a slavery enthralling men, women, children in whose veins ran not four only but eight and sixteen times as much masters' blood as slaves'. She hated them because all their sweet abhorrence found no deliverance or revenge for her. Mitigations there were, but mitigations she loathed. The uncompromising quality of her hatred was one thing that had made dissimulation easy, and through all Hugh's childhood she had practised it perfectly in every relation and direction on every one but him. Another easement had been her indomitable, unflagging triple purpose to be free, to be reunited to her master, and to be revenged.And a third, craftily won through the trustfulness of Hugh's Quaker mother, had been the opportunity to wreak the frequent overflow of her resentments on him. The fact that he was almost of the exact age of her own lost offspring had forever goaded her, and to him, with each maltreatment, she had told again her heart's whole burden, outermost wrong, innermost rage, thus recovering poise to treat his sisters and brother with exemplary care and tenderly to discuss with their mother Hugh's precocious reticence and gravity. Always she had held a self-command cunningly tempered in the fire of her triple resolve and fitted to the desperate chances with which she unceasingly crossed daggers. She never tired of telling her little white slave that, having herself once got the lash, she was only paying interest on it through him. Him, at least, she would teach to hate slavery as she hated it.Hugh's listener moved as if to touch him. A boat was coming by. They paused in their "thort-ships" walk and with a slight choke in her voice Ramsey asked: "You know what I hope?" Her voice went lower. "I hope you learned.""That's the strangest part," said Hugh. "I did."The boat passed, a cloud of burning gems. "Go on," said Ramsey, "I can see that and hear you at the same time."But Hugh's mind was too masculine for such legerdemain and though she sighed and sighed again he waited until the vision grew dim astern. Then, as he was about to resume, she interrupted.

About eleven o'clock that same Sunday evening theVotaress, at full speed, was in a part of the river whose remarkable character sustained the son of John Courteney and the daughter of Gideon Hayle in the theory that their interest in it was all that had brought them to—all that detained them in—the unlighted pilothouse, on the visitors' bench, beside Watson. Below, the passengers were for the most part once more in slumber. The exhorter had loudly sung himself to sleep:

"'Mahch-ign thoo Im-madn-uedl's groudndToe fahr-eh wordlds odn high.'"

"'Mahch-ign thoo Im-madn-uedl's groudndToe fahr-eh wordlds odn high.'"

"'Mahch-ign thoo Im-madn-uedl's groudnd

Toe fahr-eh wordlds odn high.'"

Madame Hayle was in her stateroom and berth, deep in sleep under the weight of her toils and assured by the players that Ramsey should go to bed when they did. Basile, too, slept, but talked and tossed in his sleep, while old Joy, sent to him by Ramsey and the Gilmores, crouched outside his door and dozed with an ear against it. The Yazoo squire, his children, his sister, her husband, the Vicksburgers, and they of Milliken's Bend, purposing to be called up an hour before day to leave the boat at their proper landings, had "retired" early, saying fond good-bys and hoping to meet every one again. The ladies had astonished Ramsey with kisses, given, doubtless, she thought, because her father was a hero and her mother a saint. The squire's brother-in-law had assured her that her brothers, all three—as Southern boys always, or almost always, did—would come out all right—every way; but on being asked for details he had slipped away to give his De Bow to the commodore and his last good-by to Hugh.

The actor and his wife, however, were as broad awake as Watson. Loving the lone starry hours for the hours' own starry sake and having for Hugh and Ramsey a certain zeal unconfessed even to each other, they were yet in view from the pilot's wheel and visitors' bench at this hour of eleven, staying up as willingly as nightingales with the young husband and wife who had agreed with them that somebody's mental radius "certain'y had" lengthened as suddenly as her gown.

This young pair were expecting to go ashore within the next half-hour at "New Carthage," a city of seven houses, nearly opposite another of equal pride called Palmyra, and some four miles above the head of Hurricane Island, whose foot theVotaresswas then passing. They and the Gilmores were still down at the forward edge of the texas roof, the players finding the Carthaginians very attractive: fluent on morals, cuisine, manners, steamboats, the turf, fashions, the chase; voluble on the burdensomeness of the slave to his master, the blessedness of the master to his slave; but sore to the touch on politics and religion—with their religion quite innocently adjusted to their politics—and promptly going hard aground on any allusion to history, travel, the poets, statistics, architecture, ornithology, art, music, myths, memoirs, Europe, Asia, Africa, homœopathy, or phrenology. It entertained the players just to see how many things the happy lovers knew nothing about and to hear them state in some new form, each time they backed off a sand-bar of their own ignorance, that they had seen the world, sucked the orange, yet found no spot of earth so perfect to live in as New Carthage.

The briefest sittings at such entertainment had been enough for Hugh, too much for Ramsey, and had driven them back, twice and thrice, to that fairer world on high in the pilot-house, where they could study the river undistracted. There and thence, now together, now apart, they had gone and come all through Watson's watch, moved by Hugh's duties or her caprice. Their each new meeting had been by accident, but it is odd how often accidents can occur—"at that stage o' the game," thought the kind pilot, and on each recurrence he noticed that they had got a bit farther on in the story of Phyllis.

"How long is this island, Mr. Watson?" inquired Ramsey, as if islands were all she was sitting up for.

"Two mile' 'n' a half. D'd you ask me that before? I don't hear much behind me if it ain't hove right at me." Stalest device of the sentimentalist—the self-sacrificing lie! But Watson cared not for its staleness if it might promote the game. And the game, though as wanderingly as the river, went on. Without strict order of time, now on the bench, now on the roof, early and late, here is how it went:

"You're not afraid of my brothers, are you? I'm not."

"I'm afraid for them. And for my father and grandfather. And for your father and your mother."

"Good gracious!" laughed Ramsey, then mused, and then asked: "Ain't you afraid for me?"

Hugh said nothing, and thenceforth her tone grew more maidenly though her words remained childlike enough.

"I know why you want to tell me about Phyllis," she added more softly. "You think if you don't my brothers will."

"They don't know the facts," murmured Hugh.

"Don't they think they do? And ain't that the trouble?"

"Yes." Hugh thought her insight surprising, while she enjoyed the spiritual largeness she fancied she saw in his immobile features. "Yes," he repeated, "they think they do; that's the trouble, much of it."

"How do you know they don't?"

"By what they believe and by what I know."

"How do you know you know?"

"By my own eyes and Phyllis's own lips."

"Would she tell you things she never told any one else?"

"Yes, things she never dared tell any one else."

Ramsey pondered, laughed, and pondered and laughed again: "Why, most of that time you was—you were—nothing but a little toddler. Didn't she love you?"

"She hated me."

Ramsey flinched but quickly laughed a bright unbelief to the youth's face, a face which might as well have been a wood-carving. "Oh," she cried, "how ridiculous!"

"She used to flog me, cruelly."

Ramsey gasped: "And you never told? Oh, why—why——?"

"She said she'd kill me—and my mother. And she'd have done it, somehow."

"But she's been dead ten years!"

"Has she?"

"Why, of course! Wasn't she on theQuakeresswhen——?"

"So was I."

Ramsey flinched worse and stared away with lips apart, wondering if that was what gave him that look.

"But Phyllis," she resumed, "was lost."

"Was she?"

"Why ... wasn't she? Mammy Joy says my uncle—in the blazing pilot-house—did you know my uncle Dan?"

"Yes. That night, half an hour before the burning——"

"Oh! was it at night?"

"Yes. I was sitting with Phyllis, behind him, with him at the wheel, as we're sitting now behind Mr. Watson."

"Uncle Dan didn't hate you, did he?"

"No, indeed."

"Then why didn't you tell him about Phyllis? He was her master, you know."

"I did. He wormed it out of me. He was like you—in some things."

The questioner flashed and stared but then dropped her eyes. "Did he—have red curls?"

"Yes, redder than yours."

"Humph!" ... She mused.... "I'm tired here. Let's go down by the Gilmores and walk—'thortships!"

They went. "Well?—about Phyllis? What did she whip you for? Being bad?"

"Bad or good was all one to Phyllis."

"Wasn't—weren't—weren't you ever bad, Mr. Hugh?"

"Frequently."

"How were you bad?—steal jam?—eat green plums?"

"Yes; had fights, went in swimming—in snake holes——"

"D'd you tease your sisters?—pull their hair?—let the sawdust out o' their dolls?"

"Yes, yes, all that."

"Hmm! that's nothing. Basile and I—Ain't you going on? Of course, if you don't want to I—I shan't worm. Why did Phyllis—oh, pshaw!"

With the exclamation came such one-sided mirth that Mrs. Gilmore looked round. But her husband said there would never be anything to look round for while "that laugh" kept its quality.

Presently Hugh found himself murmurously "going on" and Ramsey listening. It was a great moment in both lives. If we cannot see it so, no matter; but in still depths of perception below all formulated thought both the youth and the girl were aware, separately, that the story of Phyllis was not the largest fruit of the hour.

Phyllis, Hugh said, had not hated him alone. In her heart had burned a pure flame of wrath against every member—save one—of the fair race to which she belonged by three-fourths of her blood but by not one word of human law. Wronged for the race she disclaimed, she hated the race that disclaimed her. Hated even the mothers of Hugh and Ramsey, who abhorred slavery, a slavery enthralling men, women, children in whose veins ran not four only but eight and sixteen times as much masters' blood as slaves'. She hated them because all their sweet abhorrence found no deliverance or revenge for her. Mitigations there were, but mitigations she loathed. The uncompromising quality of her hatred was one thing that had made dissimulation easy, and through all Hugh's childhood she had practised it perfectly in every relation and direction on every one but him. Another easement had been her indomitable, unflagging triple purpose to be free, to be reunited to her master, and to be revenged.

And a third, craftily won through the trustfulness of Hugh's Quaker mother, had been the opportunity to wreak the frequent overflow of her resentments on him. The fact that he was almost of the exact age of her own lost offspring had forever goaded her, and to him, with each maltreatment, she had told again her heart's whole burden, outermost wrong, innermost rage, thus recovering poise to treat his sisters and brother with exemplary care and tenderly to discuss with their mother Hugh's precocious reticence and gravity. Always she had held a self-command cunningly tempered in the fire of her triple resolve and fitted to the desperate chances with which she unceasingly crossed daggers. She never tired of telling her little white slave that, having herself once got the lash, she was only paying interest on it through him. Him, at least, she would teach to hate slavery as she hated it.

Hugh's listener moved as if to touch him. A boat was coming by. They paused in their "thort-ships" walk and with a slight choke in her voice Ramsey asked: "You know what I hope?" Her voice went lower. "I hope you learned."

"That's the strangest part," said Hugh. "I did."

The boat passed, a cloud of burning gems. "Go on," said Ramsey, "I can see that and hear you at the same time."

But Hugh's mind was too masculine for such legerdemain and though she sighed and sighed again he waited until the vision grew dim astern. Then, as he was about to resume, she interrupted.

XXXITHE BURNING BOAT

"Where was the commodore all that time?" she asked."In Europe. We did business there too. It wasn't all river and boats those days.""Humph!" She preferred it to be all river and boats."But at length," said Hugh——"What length?""Ten years. Grandfather was coming home, to stay. We were all to go up to Saint Louis on theQuakeress.""Phyllis too?""Yes, to meet him there and bring him back with us.""Ten years!" marvelled Ramsey. "Hadn't Phyllis ever heard from my—from Walnut Hills?""Now and then, yes; and when those ten years seemed to have worn her, body and soul, to the breaking point——""You're strange. You feel tender to her yet.""Perhaps I do. One day—night—she got word—I heard it from my nursery bed—she got news; news that to her was as good and as bad as news could be.""Thathewas on the river again!" guessed Ramsey."Yes, relearning it—it changes so fast, you know—and that your father had asked my father to employ him; for he didn't want to go with your father.""No, Hayles willfightfor Hayles, pop-a says, but they won't work for them.""Also that he was going to be married. But Phyllis told my mother so meekly that the past was all past——""And she'd seemed so good for so long, I suppose.""Yes—that even my father thought itwaspast, and when we went aboard the boat and it started up the river, there at the wheel was your uncle Dan.""You didn't dare tell on her?—Oh, you were only ten years old!""It wasn't that. I was older than I am to-day. But if I told a word I'd have to tell all, and by that time she'd made me believe that about all the guilt was mine.""Yours! Well, and then? Was his lady-love on the boat?""No, but a passenger who came aboard at Natchez turned out to be the overseer Phyllis had once run away from.""Oh! oh! the man who lost the child! What a difference that must have made!""Difference a wind makes to a fire. And yet for a time things ran along as smoothly as the old boat.""She wasn't any older than you.""For a boat she was, several times. Mr. Watson," asked Hugh from the roof between the Gilmores and the pilot, "what's the average age of a boat on this river?""Average age? Well, it varies! Say about five year'."Hugh's voice dropped again. "The overseer being aboard, Phyllis and I, to be clear of him, were allowed free run of the roofs, and I being the captain's son it was so natural to see us often in the pilot-house——""And she was so wary, and you were so silent——""Yes—that no one noticed anything and the past still seemed past. One day your uncle Dan told me of your twin brothers. They'd spent half a year with him.""Which mom-a's sorry for to this day. They worship him yet, she says. Go on; skip their visit.""Well, when we reached Saint Louis I knew that he and Phyllis had agreed on something perfectly joyful to her. I don't know even now—what it was. She was to be set free, but that was only a small part.""Skip again. The commodore joined you?""No, he failed us. We had to turn back without him.""But with Uncle Dan, of course?""Yes, in wedding clothes. And with the overseer and with Phyllis. She'd tried to run away again, in Saint Louis, but she couldn't do it without my mother's help, and my mother, though she declared the laws were shameful, wouldn't break them.""I'd 've broken them!" whispered Ramsey. "Well, you turned back?""Yes, and I saw at once there was something horribly wrong. Day and night Phyllis was frantic. She hid her feelings from others, wonderfully, but she poured them out on your uncle Dan. It was then he suspected how she'd been treating me, and coaxed me to tell him; and when he told her I'd told him and that he would tell she saw she was at the end of everything and I thought that now she would whip me to death.""Stop! Stop!" The two were again in the pilot-house, but Watson, just then jingling his engine bells, was too busy to heed anything not "hove at him." His big bell had sounded for New Carthage, and John Courteney had appeared down forward of it, but neither Hugh nor Ramsey was enough diverted to answer the parting hail of the town's two residents joyfully going ashore. "I can't stand it!" she ran on. "I won't hear it!""But I must tell you," murmured Hugh."Why must you?""Because of what you have already heard and will hear and because you are you; who you are; what you are.""Mr. Hugh, I'm the same I was last night when you and your father were talking poetry and trying to get rid of me!""Not quite.""Well, go on; they quarrelled and you thought your hour had come—it seems it hadn't. Go on—if you 'must.'""I must," he said, and went on. "I had picked up, that day—it was the third day out and we were down in these bends and had taken on nearly half a load of cotton—I'd picked up, where your uncle Dan had dropped it, a small paper box of fusees—you know?—matches that you can't blow out. Childlike, guiltily, I kept them. In their quarrel, that night, Phyllis ended by imploring your uncle Dan not to tell on her. I never knew what supplication was till then. She wept on her knees, clinging to his. When she had to leave him, to put me to bed, he made her promise never again to do me the least hurt, and swore that if she did he'd sell her to the overseer."We went. I was afraid that down in the stateroom she'd find the fusees in my pocket and that I should go to jail as a public thief. But she stood me in the middle of the room, threw herself on my berth, and writhed and hid her face and beat her head and looked at me a hundredfold more murderously than your uncle Dan had ever looked at her. So once, while she lay still a moment, I slipped out onto the guards, and as I lifted my hand to throw the fusees into the river she caught it in hers, it and them. Then for the first time in my life I resisted her. I fought. Do you know what a cow-eat is?"Ramsey stared. "No. Is it a way of fighting?"It was not a way of fighting. Cattle often eat deep holes into cotton bales. "Ah, yes!" The tale went on."I fought her, and somehow the fusees, the whole box, got lighted and were dropped. Whether she dropped them purposely or not, or I dropped them, I'll never know; but they fell just over the rail, among the cotton bales, and we saw the lint in a cow-eat about three tiers down flash like gunpowder. She snatched me back into the stateroom, shut the door, and stood clutching me wildly and listening. 'Say your prayers,' she said, and knelt with me. She'd never knelt with me before. When I finished she had me go over them again. She did not say them with me, only whimpered and whispered, and fluttered her hands on my head and back. She made me begin once more, but before I was half through we heard the watchman run along the roof close over us and cry: 'Fire!' She lifted me to my feet, whispering, 'Now! Now!' and began to put a life-preserver on me, still saying over and over nothing but 'Now! Now! Now!' until the sounds of alarm were everywhere, and just as she sprang into the next stateroom to rouse the other children my mother came into it from the main cabin. I got my little brother into my room and was dressing him there while my mother dressed one sister and Phyllis the other, when your father's overseer, who had once followed the river himself, came down the cabin shouting to every one to come out and go forward and was kicking in every door he found locked. At ours he told my mother not to mind the smoke—which had grown thick and choking—but to rush us all straight through it to the boiler deck and down the forward stairs, and on her life not to stop for life-preservers but to go at once. So she and Phyllis ran with the three little ones; but I, childlike again, had got the notion that life-preservers were forbidden and was so long getting mine off that Phyllis turned back for me."That delay saved my life, for, as we ran out into the cabin together, the smoke in front of us, forward, turned red and then went all to flame, and right in the midst of it, hurrying toward us, we saw the overseer. He tripped on a hassock or something and fell and the flame literally swallowed him alive. We sprang through an open stateroom and climbed a wheelhouse stair to the hurricane deck. There we saw no one, but through the crackle and roar of the flame, which a light breeze behind us sent straight up into the darkness, I heard the voice of my father, twice, at his post in front of the skylights, and the answer of the engine bells showed that your uncle Dan and the engineers were sticking to their places. We were landing in a strong eddy under a point and didn't have to round to. The boat was wonderfully quiet. I even heard—probably because the shore was so close ahead of us—the first mate—same that's with us here now—heard him ordering the stage run out over the water, as always when about to land. I heard the clerks and others telling the passengers to 'keep cool' and 'not crowd,' saying there was room and time for every one."The pilot-house was burning brightly on one side but it was so wrapped in smoke that your uncle Dan was hid from Phyllis and me till the boat hit the bank. Then the breeze gave us a glimpse of him as it curled the whole blaze forward so that it overarched the people who filled the front stairs and gangway, waiting to swarm off across the stage. That brought panic and the panic brought death. Some male passengers—we couldn't see, but our hearing was like sight—had got all the women and children to the front of the crowd and a few even partly out on the stage, over the water, to be the first put ashore."When the boat's nose struck the shore the back part of the crowd thought the landing was made and began to push, and there were no men in front to push back—for some of the boat's family, missing Phyllis and me, had run aft to find us—and when that smoke rolled down on every one the push became a rush and suddenly two or three women were screaming at one edge of the stage, with nothing to lay hold on but one another."We heard their cries and the cry of the crowd, through the crackling of the fire. My mother tried to save them, with her three children clinging to her, and the whole six fell into the black shadow of the freight guards and the swift eddy drew them under the boat's hull before a thing could be done except that two of our men jumped in and sank with them."Ramsey covered her face. "What did your father do?""He let himself down by one of the derrick posts. As he did so, and when they who had tried to rescue us had failed, the mate, who is a famous swimmer, sprang overboard, as near the larboard wheel as the fire would let him, struck out round it, climbed up on it into the paddle-box, and tried to reach the cabin deck by the kitchen stair. But a sweep of the flames drove him back into the river, and he was just sinking when Mr. Gilmore, you know, drew him into his skiff."At the same time your uncle Dan came tumbling down from a pilot-house window and staggered with us back to the stern rail, for all the stairs were burning. It was idle to call for help. The whole thing had lasted but a minute or two. Phyllis didn't want help and we had just that instant to get down in."Those who had gone ashore could not see us. The smoke hid us. So did the texas. Your uncle Dan dragged a mattress out of it and dropped it over the stern, away down onto the fantail, scores of feet below. The flames made the boat's shadow as black as ink. We thought the yawl was down there, but some of the crew had swum out from the shore and pulled away in it to pick up the mate—and us, of course, if we were with him."Your uncle, though fearfully burnt, took me on his back and showed Phyllis how to climb down beside him by the bracket work and posts and balustrades of the guards, as I could have done, but he wouldn't let me."If the wind had been the other way we should have perished right there. But the guards of the ladies' cabin ran round the stern, as they do on this boat, and her fantail, below, stretched still farther aft. So we got down to those guards easily. But in the ladies' cabin the fire had worked aft faster than outside, and on those guards the heat was torture. We could only hang from them and drop. Your uncle went first, then Phyllis and then I, he catching us, for down there he had light enough, looking up, and as we fell the flames shot through the cabin stern windows. He caught us, but then he said, 'I'm gone, Phyllis,' and crumpled down at her feet. Then I cried for help but Phyllis said we didn't need to call, and we didn't. We'd been seen at last, on the guards as we climbed down. They called to us to stick to the boat till swimmers could reach us. But we couldn't. The wind had turned, the heat was worse than ever, the fire had parted the boat's lines and she was being blown out into the current. Then your uncle struggled half up again and helped Phyllis get the mattress outside the bull railings, where I climbed out and held it. He asked if I could swim and when I said yes he warned me not to swim to the shore as the river was falling and the bank caving, but to float with the mattress and call till I was picked up. So I went over with it. But it twisted away from me. I swam to a floating cotton bale, one with a flicker of fire still on it, as it drifted up-stream in the eddy. At the same time I'd heard your uncle and Phyllis strike the water together, and a moment later I saw them—their heads. She was holding to the mattress with one hand and to him with the other. But presently I heard her give a low wail and saw him slip from her and sink. Then the smoke came down between us, and by and by the returning yawl, whose men had heard my calls and had seen Mr. Gillmore's skiff pick up the mate, found me on the cotton bale and had barely lifted me in when I fainted away."Ramsey covered her face again. It would have been joy to her to let one of the drops that melted through her fingers fall on Hugh's hand.Watson cleared his throat. "Sort o' inquirin' fo' one o' you, down on the roof," he said without looking back. He was a man not above repeating himself for a good end. "Third time they've sung out to me, but—up here I off'm don't notice much f'om anywheres 'at ain't hove right at me."Ned entered and silently took the wheel.

"Where was the commodore all that time?" she asked.

"In Europe. We did business there too. It wasn't all river and boats those days."

"Humph!" She preferred it to be all river and boats.

"But at length," said Hugh——

"What length?"

"Ten years. Grandfather was coming home, to stay. We were all to go up to Saint Louis on theQuakeress."

"Phyllis too?"

"Yes, to meet him there and bring him back with us."

"Ten years!" marvelled Ramsey. "Hadn't Phyllis ever heard from my—from Walnut Hills?"

"Now and then, yes; and when those ten years seemed to have worn her, body and soul, to the breaking point——"

"You're strange. You feel tender to her yet."

"Perhaps I do. One day—night—she got word—I heard it from my nursery bed—she got news; news that to her was as good and as bad as news could be."

"Thathewas on the river again!" guessed Ramsey.

"Yes, relearning it—it changes so fast, you know—and that your father had asked my father to employ him; for he didn't want to go with your father."

"No, Hayles willfightfor Hayles, pop-a says, but they won't work for them."

"Also that he was going to be married. But Phyllis told my mother so meekly that the past was all past——"

"And she'd seemed so good for so long, I suppose."

"Yes—that even my father thought itwaspast, and when we went aboard the boat and it started up the river, there at the wheel was your uncle Dan."

"You didn't dare tell on her?—Oh, you were only ten years old!"

"It wasn't that. I was older than I am to-day. But if I told a word I'd have to tell all, and by that time she'd made me believe that about all the guilt was mine."

"Yours! Well, and then? Was his lady-love on the boat?"

"No, but a passenger who came aboard at Natchez turned out to be the overseer Phyllis had once run away from."

"Oh! oh! the man who lost the child! What a difference that must have made!"

"Difference a wind makes to a fire. And yet for a time things ran along as smoothly as the old boat."

"She wasn't any older than you."

"For a boat she was, several times. Mr. Watson," asked Hugh from the roof between the Gilmores and the pilot, "what's the average age of a boat on this river?"

"Average age? Well, it varies! Say about five year'."

Hugh's voice dropped again. "The overseer being aboard, Phyllis and I, to be clear of him, were allowed free run of the roofs, and I being the captain's son it was so natural to see us often in the pilot-house——"

"And she was so wary, and you were so silent——"

"Yes—that no one noticed anything and the past still seemed past. One day your uncle Dan told me of your twin brothers. They'd spent half a year with him."

"Which mom-a's sorry for to this day. They worship him yet, she says. Go on; skip their visit."

"Well, when we reached Saint Louis I knew that he and Phyllis had agreed on something perfectly joyful to her. I don't know even now—what it was. She was to be set free, but that was only a small part."

"Skip again. The commodore joined you?"

"No, he failed us. We had to turn back without him."

"But with Uncle Dan, of course?"

"Yes, in wedding clothes. And with the overseer and with Phyllis. She'd tried to run away again, in Saint Louis, but she couldn't do it without my mother's help, and my mother, though she declared the laws were shameful, wouldn't break them."

"I'd 've broken them!" whispered Ramsey. "Well, you turned back?"

"Yes, and I saw at once there was something horribly wrong. Day and night Phyllis was frantic. She hid her feelings from others, wonderfully, but she poured them out on your uncle Dan. It was then he suspected how she'd been treating me, and coaxed me to tell him; and when he told her I'd told him and that he would tell she saw she was at the end of everything and I thought that now she would whip me to death."

"Stop! Stop!" The two were again in the pilot-house, but Watson, just then jingling his engine bells, was too busy to heed anything not "hove at him." His big bell had sounded for New Carthage, and John Courteney had appeared down forward of it, but neither Hugh nor Ramsey was enough diverted to answer the parting hail of the town's two residents joyfully going ashore. "I can't stand it!" she ran on. "I won't hear it!"

"But I must tell you," murmured Hugh.

"Why must you?"

"Because of what you have already heard and will hear and because you are you; who you are; what you are."

"Mr. Hugh, I'm the same I was last night when you and your father were talking poetry and trying to get rid of me!"

"Not quite."

"Well, go on; they quarrelled and you thought your hour had come—it seems it hadn't. Go on—if you 'must.'"

"I must," he said, and went on. "I had picked up, that day—it was the third day out and we were down in these bends and had taken on nearly half a load of cotton—I'd picked up, where your uncle Dan had dropped it, a small paper box of fusees—you know?—matches that you can't blow out. Childlike, guiltily, I kept them. In their quarrel, that night, Phyllis ended by imploring your uncle Dan not to tell on her. I never knew what supplication was till then. She wept on her knees, clinging to his. When she had to leave him, to put me to bed, he made her promise never again to do me the least hurt, and swore that if she did he'd sell her to the overseer.

"We went. I was afraid that down in the stateroom she'd find the fusees in my pocket and that I should go to jail as a public thief. But she stood me in the middle of the room, threw herself on my berth, and writhed and hid her face and beat her head and looked at me a hundredfold more murderously than your uncle Dan had ever looked at her. So once, while she lay still a moment, I slipped out onto the guards, and as I lifted my hand to throw the fusees into the river she caught it in hers, it and them. Then for the first time in my life I resisted her. I fought. Do you know what a cow-eat is?"

Ramsey stared. "No. Is it a way of fighting?"

It was not a way of fighting. Cattle often eat deep holes into cotton bales. "Ah, yes!" The tale went on.

"I fought her, and somehow the fusees, the whole box, got lighted and were dropped. Whether she dropped them purposely or not, or I dropped them, I'll never know; but they fell just over the rail, among the cotton bales, and we saw the lint in a cow-eat about three tiers down flash like gunpowder. She snatched me back into the stateroom, shut the door, and stood clutching me wildly and listening. 'Say your prayers,' she said, and knelt with me. She'd never knelt with me before. When I finished she had me go over them again. She did not say them with me, only whimpered and whispered, and fluttered her hands on my head and back. She made me begin once more, but before I was half through we heard the watchman run along the roof close over us and cry: 'Fire!' She lifted me to my feet, whispering, 'Now! Now!' and began to put a life-preserver on me, still saying over and over nothing but 'Now! Now! Now!' until the sounds of alarm were everywhere, and just as she sprang into the next stateroom to rouse the other children my mother came into it from the main cabin. I got my little brother into my room and was dressing him there while my mother dressed one sister and Phyllis the other, when your father's overseer, who had once followed the river himself, came down the cabin shouting to every one to come out and go forward and was kicking in every door he found locked. At ours he told my mother not to mind the smoke—which had grown thick and choking—but to rush us all straight through it to the boiler deck and down the forward stairs, and on her life not to stop for life-preservers but to go at once. So she and Phyllis ran with the three little ones; but I, childlike again, had got the notion that life-preservers were forbidden and was so long getting mine off that Phyllis turned back for me.

"That delay saved my life, for, as we ran out into the cabin together, the smoke in front of us, forward, turned red and then went all to flame, and right in the midst of it, hurrying toward us, we saw the overseer. He tripped on a hassock or something and fell and the flame literally swallowed him alive. We sprang through an open stateroom and climbed a wheelhouse stair to the hurricane deck. There we saw no one, but through the crackle and roar of the flame, which a light breeze behind us sent straight up into the darkness, I heard the voice of my father, twice, at his post in front of the skylights, and the answer of the engine bells showed that your uncle Dan and the engineers were sticking to their places. We were landing in a strong eddy under a point and didn't have to round to. The boat was wonderfully quiet. I even heard—probably because the shore was so close ahead of us—the first mate—same that's with us here now—heard him ordering the stage run out over the water, as always when about to land. I heard the clerks and others telling the passengers to 'keep cool' and 'not crowd,' saying there was room and time for every one.

"The pilot-house was burning brightly on one side but it was so wrapped in smoke that your uncle Dan was hid from Phyllis and me till the boat hit the bank. Then the breeze gave us a glimpse of him as it curled the whole blaze forward so that it overarched the people who filled the front stairs and gangway, waiting to swarm off across the stage. That brought panic and the panic brought death. Some male passengers—we couldn't see, but our hearing was like sight—had got all the women and children to the front of the crowd and a few even partly out on the stage, over the water, to be the first put ashore.

"When the boat's nose struck the shore the back part of the crowd thought the landing was made and began to push, and there were no men in front to push back—for some of the boat's family, missing Phyllis and me, had run aft to find us—and when that smoke rolled down on every one the push became a rush and suddenly two or three women were screaming at one edge of the stage, with nothing to lay hold on but one another.

"We heard their cries and the cry of the crowd, through the crackling of the fire. My mother tried to save them, with her three children clinging to her, and the whole six fell into the black shadow of the freight guards and the swift eddy drew them under the boat's hull before a thing could be done except that two of our men jumped in and sank with them."

Ramsey covered her face. "What did your father do?"

"He let himself down by one of the derrick posts. As he did so, and when they who had tried to rescue us had failed, the mate, who is a famous swimmer, sprang overboard, as near the larboard wheel as the fire would let him, struck out round it, climbed up on it into the paddle-box, and tried to reach the cabin deck by the kitchen stair. But a sweep of the flames drove him back into the river, and he was just sinking when Mr. Gilmore, you know, drew him into his skiff.

"At the same time your uncle Dan came tumbling down from a pilot-house window and staggered with us back to the stern rail, for all the stairs were burning. It was idle to call for help. The whole thing had lasted but a minute or two. Phyllis didn't want help and we had just that instant to get down in.

"Those who had gone ashore could not see us. The smoke hid us. So did the texas. Your uncle Dan dragged a mattress out of it and dropped it over the stern, away down onto the fantail, scores of feet below. The flames made the boat's shadow as black as ink. We thought the yawl was down there, but some of the crew had swum out from the shore and pulled away in it to pick up the mate—and us, of course, if we were with him.

"Your uncle, though fearfully burnt, took me on his back and showed Phyllis how to climb down beside him by the bracket work and posts and balustrades of the guards, as I could have done, but he wouldn't let me.

"If the wind had been the other way we should have perished right there. But the guards of the ladies' cabin ran round the stern, as they do on this boat, and her fantail, below, stretched still farther aft. So we got down to those guards easily. But in the ladies' cabin the fire had worked aft faster than outside, and on those guards the heat was torture. We could only hang from them and drop. Your uncle went first, then Phyllis and then I, he catching us, for down there he had light enough, looking up, and as we fell the flames shot through the cabin stern windows. He caught us, but then he said, 'I'm gone, Phyllis,' and crumpled down at her feet. Then I cried for help but Phyllis said we didn't need to call, and we didn't. We'd been seen at last, on the guards as we climbed down. They called to us to stick to the boat till swimmers could reach us. But we couldn't. The wind had turned, the heat was worse than ever, the fire had parted the boat's lines and she was being blown out into the current. Then your uncle struggled half up again and helped Phyllis get the mattress outside the bull railings, where I climbed out and held it. He asked if I could swim and when I said yes he warned me not to swim to the shore as the river was falling and the bank caving, but to float with the mattress and call till I was picked up. So I went over with it. But it twisted away from me. I swam to a floating cotton bale, one with a flicker of fire still on it, as it drifted up-stream in the eddy. At the same time I'd heard your uncle and Phyllis strike the water together, and a moment later I saw them—their heads. She was holding to the mattress with one hand and to him with the other. But presently I heard her give a low wail and saw him slip from her and sink. Then the smoke came down between us, and by and by the returning yawl, whose men had heard my calls and had seen Mr. Gillmore's skiff pick up the mate, found me on the cotton bale and had barely lifted me in when I fainted away."

Ramsey covered her face again. It would have been joy to her to let one of the drops that melted through her fingers fall on Hugh's hand.

Watson cleared his throat. "Sort o' inquirin' fo' one o' you, down on the roof," he said without looking back. He was a man not above repeating himself for a good end. "Third time they've sung out to me, but—up here I off'm don't notice much f'om anywheres 'at ain't hove right at me."

Ned entered and silently took the wheel.

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