"That's so," he thought, unused to such quick thought.

"Isn't it beautiful?" she asked him, looking around her. "Do you try to write all that, too--I mean this sandbar, and those willows, and that woods down there, and--the caving bank?"

"Everything," he admitted. "See?"

He handed her the page which he had just written. Holding it in one hand--there was hardly a breath of air stirring--she read it word for word.

"Yes, that's it!" She nodded her head. "How do you do it? I've just been reading--let me see, '... the best romance becomes dangerous if by its excitement it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, and--and----' I've forgotten the rest of it. Could anything make this life down here--anything written, I mean--seem uninteresting?"

He looked at her without answering. What was this she was saying? What was this shanty-boat woman, this runaway wife, talking about? He was dazed at being transported so suddenly from his observations to such reflections.

"That's right," he replied, inanely. "I remember reading that--somewhere!"

"You've read Ruskin?" she cried. "Really, have you?"

"Sesame and Lilies--there's where it was!"

"Oh, you know?" she exclaimed, looking at him. He caught the full flash of her delight, as well as surprise, at finding someone who had read what she quoted, and could place the phrase.

"The sun's bright," she continued. "Won't you come down on my boat in the shade? I've lots of books, and I'm hungry--I'm starving to talk to somebody about them!"

It was a pretty little boat, sweet and clean; the sitting room was draped with curtains along the walls, and there was a bookcase against the part.i.tion. She drew a rocking chair up for him, drew her own little sewing chair up before the shelves, and began to take out books.

He had but to sit there and show his sympathy with her excitement over those books. He could not help but remember where he had first heard her name, seen the depressed woman who was her mother. And the bent old hunter who was her father. It was useless for him to try to explain her.

Just that morning, too, he had left Nelia Crele's husband in an alcoholic stupor--a man almost incredibly stupid!

"I know you don't mind listening to me prattle!" she laughed, archly.

"You're used to it. You're amused, too, and you're thinking what a story I will make, aren't you, now?"

"If--if a man could only write you!" he said, with such sincerity that she laughed aloud with glee.

"Oh, I've read books!" she declared. "I know--I've been miserable, and I've been unhappy, but I've turned to the books, and they've told me.

They kept me alive--they kept me above those horrid little things which a woman--which I have. You've never been in jail, I suppose?"

"What--in jail? I've been there, but not a prisoner. To see prisoners."

"You couldn't know, then, the way prisoners feel. I know. I reckon most women know. But now I'm out of jail. I'm free."

He could not answer; her eyes flashed as they narrowed, and she fairly glared at him in the intensity of her declaration.

"Oh, you couldn't know," she laughed, "but that's the way I feel. I'm free! Isn't the river beautiful to-day? I'm like the river----"

"Which is kept between two banks?" he suggested.

"I was wrong," she shook her head. "I'm a bird----"

"I can well admit that," he laughed.

"Oh," she cried, in mock rebuke, "the idea!"

"It's your own--and a very brilliant one," he retorted, and they laughed together.

There was no resisting the gale of Nelia Crete's effervescent spirits.

It was clear that she had burst through bonds of restraint that had imprisoned her soul for years. Terabon was too acute an observer to frighten the sensitive exhilaration. It would pa.s.s--he was only too sure of that. What would follow?

The sandbar was miles long, miles wide; six or seven miles of caving bend was visible below them, part of it over another sandbar that extended out into the river. There was not a boat, house, human being, or even fence in sight in any direction. Across the river there was a cotton field, but so far away it was that the stalks were but a purple haze under the afternoon sun.

"You think I'm queer?" she suddenly demanded.

"No, but I would be if----"

"If what?"

"If I didn't think you were the dandiest river tripper in the world," he exclaimed.

"You're a dear boy," she laughed. "You don't know how much good you've done me already. Now we'll get supper."

"I've two black ducks," he said. "I'll bet they'll make a good----"

"Roast," she took his word. "I'll show you I'm a dandy cook, too!"

CHAPTER XV

The Mississippi River brings people from the most distant places to close proximity; Pittsburg and even Salamanca meet Fort Benton and St.

Paul at the Forks of the Ohio. On the other hand, with uncanny certainty, those most eager to meet are kept apart and thrown to the ends of the world.

Parson Rasba saw Nelia Crele's boat drift out into the current and drop down the Chute of Wolf Island, and impelled by solitude and imagination he followed her. She had awakened sensations in his heart which he had never before known, so he acted with primitive directness and moved out into the Mississippi.

The river carried him swiftly toward a town whose electric lights sparkled on a high bluff, Hickman, and he saw the cabin-boat of the young and venturesome woman clearly outlined between him and the town.

For nearly an hour he was conscious of the a.s.sistance of the river in carrying him along at an even pace, permitting him to remain as guardian of the woman. He felt that she needed him, that he must help her, and there grew in his heart an emotion which strangely made him desire to sing and to shout.

He watched the cabin-boat drift down right into the pathway of reflections that fell from the lights on Hickman bluffs. His eyes were apparently fixed upon the boat, and he could not lose sight of it. The river carried him right into the same glare, and for a few minutes he looked up at the arcs, and shaded his eyes to get some view of the town whose sounds consisted of the mournful howling of a dog.

Rasba looked back at the town, and felt the awe which a sleeping village inspires in the thoughts of a pa.s.ser-by. He thought perhaps he would never again see that town. He wondered if there was a lost soul there whose slumberings he could disturb and bring it to salvation. He looked down the river, and the next instant his boat was seized as by a strong hand and whirled around and around, and flung far from its course. He remembered the phenomenon at the Forks of the Ohio, and again at Columbus bluff's. With difficulty he found his bearings.

He looked around and saw to his surprise that he was drifting up stream.

He looked about him in amazement. He searched the blackness of the river, and stared at the blinding lights of the town. He began to row with his sweeps, and look down stream whither had disappeared the cabin-boat whose occupant he had felt called upon to guard and protect.

That boat was gone. In the few minutes it had disappeared from his view.

He surmised, at last, that he had been thrust into an eddy, for the current was carrying him up stream, and he rowed against it in vain.

Only when he had floated hundreds of yards in the leisurely reverse current below the great bar of Island No. 6 and had drifted out into the main current again, almost under the Hickman lights once more, was he able in his ignorance to escape from the time-trap into which he had fallen.

Standing at his oars, and rowing down stream, he tried to overtake the young woman whose good looks, bright eyes, sympathetic understanding, and need of his spiritual tutoring had caught his mind and made it captive.