"Ah! that's something like music," exclaimed Captain Crayme, as Fred paused suddenly to repair a broken string. "I never hear that but I think of Wesley Treepoke, that used to run the _Quitman_; went afterward to the _Rising Planet_, when the _Quitman's_ owners put her on a new line as an opposition boat. Wess and I used to work things so as to make Louisville at the same time--he going up, I going down, and then turn about--and we always had a glorious night of it, with one or two other lively boys that we'd pick up. And Wess had a fireman that could fiddle off old 'Natchez' in a way that would just make a corpse dance till its teeth rattled, and that fireman would always be called in just as we'd got to the place where you can't tell what sort of whisky 'tis you're drinking; and I tell you, 'twas so heavenly that a fellow could forgive the last boat that beat him on the river, or stole a landing from him.

And _such_ whisky as Wess kept! used to go cruising around the back country, sampling little lots run out of private stills. He'd always find nectar, you'd better believe. Poor old boy! the tremens took him off at last. He hove his pilot overboard just before he died, and put a bullet into Pete Langston, his second clerk--they were both trying to hold him, you see--but they never laid it up against him. I wish I knew what became of the whiskey he had on hand when he walked off--no, I don't either; what am I thinking about? But I do, though--hanged if I don't!"

Fred grew pale: he had heard of drunkards growing delirious upon ceasing to drink; he had heard of men who, in periods of aberration, were impelled by the motive of the last act or recollection which strongly impressed them; what if the captain should suddenly become delirious, and try to throw _him_ overboard or shoot him? Fred determined to get the captain at once upon the guards--no, into the cabin, where there would be no sight of water to suggest anything dreadful--and search his room for pistols. But the captain objected to being moved into the cabin.

"The boys," said the captain, alluding to the gamblers, "are mighty sharp in the eye, and like as not they'd see through my little game, and then where'd my reputation be? Speaking of the boys reminds me of Harry Genang, that cleaned out that rich Kentucky planter at bluff one night, and then swore off gambling for life, and gave a good-by supper aboard the boat. 'Twas just at the time when Prince Imperial Champagne came out, and the whole supper was made of that splendid stuff. I guess I must have put away four bottles, and if I'd known how much he'd ordered, I could have carried away a couple more. I've always been sorry I didn't."

Fred wondered if there was any subject of conversation which would not suggest liquor to the captain; he even brought himself to ask if Crayme had seen the new Methodist Church at Barton since it had been finished.

"Oh, yes," said the captain; "I started to walk Moshier home one night, after we'd punished a couple of bottles of old Crow whisky at our house, and he caved in all of a sudden, and I laid him out on the steps of that very church till I could get a carriage. Those were my last two bottles of Crow, too; it's too bad the way the good things of this life paddle off."

The captain raised himself in his berth, sat on the edge thereof, stood up, stared out of the window, and began to pace his room with his head down and his hands behind his back. Little by little he raised his head, drooped his hands, flung himself into a chair, beat the devil's tattoo on the table, sprang up excitedly, and exclaimed:

"I'm going back on all the good times I ever had."

"You're only getting ready to try a new kind, Sam," said Fred.

"Well, I'm going back on my friends."

"Not on all of them; the dead ones would pat you on the back, if they got a chance."

"A world without whisky looks infernally dismal to a fellow that isn't half done living."

"It looks first-rate to a fellow that hasn't got any backdown in him."

"Curse you! I wish I'd made _you_ back down when you first talked temperance to me."

"Go ahead! Then curse your wife--don't be afraid; you've been doing it ever since you married her."

Crayme flew at Macdonald's throat; the younger man grappled the captain and threw him into his bunk. The captain struggled and glared like a tiger; Fred gasped between the special efforts dictated by self-preservation:

"Sam, I--promised to--to see you--through--and I'm--going to--do it, if--if I have to--break your neck."

The captain made one tremendous effort; Fred braced one foot against the table, put a knee on the captain's breast, held both the captain's wrists tightly, looked full into the captain's eyes, and breathed a small prayer--for his own safety. For a moment or two, perhaps longer, the captain strained violently, and then relaxed all effort, and cried:

"Fred, you've whipped me!"

"Nonsense! whip yourself," exclaimed Fred, "if you're going to stop drinking."

The captain turned his face to the wall and said nothing; but he seemed to be so persistently swallowing something that Fred suspected a secreted bottle, and moved an investigation so suddenly that the captain had not time in which to wipe his eyes.

"Hang it, Fred," said he, rather brokenly; "how _can_ what's babyish in men whip a full-grown steamboat captain?"

"The same way that it whipped a full-grown woolen-mill manager once, I suppose, old boy," said Macdonald.

"Is that so?" exclaimed the captain, astonishment getting so sudden an advantage over shame that he turned over and looked his companion in the face. "Why--how are you, Fred? I feel as if I was just being introduced.

Didn't anybody else help?"

"Yes," said Fred, "a woman; but--you've got a wife, too."

Crayme fell back on his pillow and sighed. "If I could only _think_ about her, Fred! But I can't; whisky's the only thing that comes into my mind."

"Can't think about her!" exclaimed Fred; "why, are you acquainted with her yet, I wonder? _I'll_ never forget the evening you were married."

"That _was_ jolly, wasn't it?" said Crayme. "I'll bet such sherry was never opened west of the Alleghanies before or--"

"_Hang_ your sherry!" roared Fred; "it's your wife that I remember.

_You_ couldn't see her, of course, for you were standing alongside of her; but the rest of us--well, I wished myself in your place, that's all."

"Did you, though?" said Crayme, with a smile which seemed rather proud; "well, I guess old Major Pike did too, for he drank to her about twenty times that evening. Let's see; she wore a white moire antique, I think they called it, and it cost twenty-one dollars a dozen, and there was at least one broken bottle in every--"

"And I made up my mind she was throwing herself away, in marrying a fellow that would be sure to care more for whisky than he did for her,"

interrupted Fred.

"Ease off, Fred, ease off now; there wasn't any whisky there; I tried to get some of the old Twin Tulip brand for punch, but--"

"But the devil happened to be asleep, and you got a chance to behave yourself," said Fred.

Crayme looked appealingly. "Fred," said he, "tell me about her yourself; I'll take it as a favor."

"Why, she looked like a lot of lilies and roses," said Fred, "except that you couldn't tell where one left off and the other began. As she came into the room _I_ felt like getting down on my knees. Old Bayle was telling me a vile story just then, but the minute _she_ came in he stopped as if he was shot."

"He wouldn't drink a drop that evening," said Crayme, "and I've puzzled my wits over that for five years--"

"She looked so proud of _you_" interrupted Fred, with some impatience.

"Did she?" asked Crayme. "Well, I guess I _was_ a good-looking fellow in those days; I know Pike came up to me once, with a glass in his hand, and said that he ought to drink to _me_, for I was the finest-looking groom he'd ever seen. He was so tight, though, that he couldn't hold his glass steady; and though you know I never had a drop of stingy blood in me, it _did_ go to my heart to see him spill that gorgeous sherry."

"She looked very proud of _you_," Fred repeated; "but I can't see why, for I've never seen her do it since."

"You _will_, though, hang you!" exclaimed the captain. "Get out of here!

I can think about her _now_, and I don't want anybody else around. No rudeness meant, you know, Fred."

Fred Macdonald retired quietly, taking with him the keys of both doors, and feeling more exhausted than he had been on any Saturday night since the building of the mill.

FREE SPEECH.

[_The following is quoted, by permission, from Mr. Habberton's volume_, "THE SCRIPTURE CLUB OF VALLEY REST," _published by_ G.P. Putnam's Sons, _New York_.]

The members of the Scripture Club did not put off their holy interest with their Sunday garments, as people of the world do with most things religious. When the little steamboat _Oakleaf_ started on her Monday morning trip for the city, the members of the Scripture Club might be identified by their neglect of the morning papers and their tendency to gather in small knots and engage in earnest conversation. In a corner behind the paddle-box, securely screened from wind and sun, sat Mr.

Jodderel and Mr. Primm, the latter adoring with much solemn verbosity the sacred word, and the former piling text upon text to demonstrate the final removal of all the righteous to a new state of material existence in a better-ordered planet. In the one rocking-chair of the cabin sat Insurance President Lottson, praising to Mr. Hooper, who leaned obsequiously upon the back of the chair and occasionally hopped vivaciously around it, the self-disregard of the disciples, and the evident inability of any one within sight to follow their example. The prudent Wagget was interviewing Dr. Fahrenglotz, who was going to attend the meeting of a sort of Theosophic Society, composed almost entirely of Germans, and was endeavoring to learn what points there might be in the Doctor's belief which would make a man wiser unto salvation, while Captain Maile stood by, a critical listener, and distributed pitying glances between the two. Well forward, but to the rear of the general crowd, stood Deacon Bates, in an attitude which might have seemed conservative were it not manifestly helpless; Mr. Buffle, with the smile peculiar to the successful business man; Lawyer Scott, with the air of a man who had so much to say that time could not possibly suffice in which to tell it all; Squire Woodhouse, who was in search of a good market for hay; Principal Alleman, who was in chase of an overdue shipment of text-books; and Mr. Radley, who, with indifferent success, was filling the self-assigned roll of moderator of the little assemblage.

"Nothing settled by the meeting?" said Mr. Buffle, echoing a despondent suggestion by Deacon Bates. "Of course not. You don't suppose that what theologians have been squabbling over for two thousand years can be settled in a day, do you? We made a beginning and that's a good half of anything. Why, I and every other man that builds boats have been hard at work for years, looking for the best model, and we haven't settled the question yet. We're in earnest about it--we can't help but be, for there's money in it, and while we're waiting we do the next best thing--we use the best ones we know about."

"Don't you think you'd get at the model sooner, if some of you weren't pig-headed about your own, and too fond of abusing each other's?" asked Mr. Radley.