THE 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 the _Quakeress_." "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." "That _he_ was 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 will _fight_ for 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 it _was_ past, 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."