Tad watched the pilot spin the huge wheel to left and right, as the _Ohio Belle_ splashed her way down through the shallows. There was plenty of water and fairly easy steering, but the skill of the gray-bearded old keel-boat man in the pilot-house seemed uncanny nevertheless. He could sense a sunken snag farther away than Tad could see a floating one. And he seemed to mind steering at night no more than in the daytime. They stopped at Marietta and later at Parkersburg that first afternoon, and as darkness fell, the chief pilot came up to relieve his assistant, who had had the wheel most of the day. Tad, before he turned in that night, had the thrill of standing in the pilot-house and watching the old-time river-man take his craft down through the inky blackness, swinging the bends like a race horse. The little stateroom was clean and comfortable in spite of its tiny size, and the boy slept so soundly that not even the hoarse wail of the whistle awoke him. The _Ohio Belle_ made a stop of several hours at Cincinnati to load and unload freight the morning of the third day. And again the following forenoon at Louisville there was a long delay. The weather, which had been fine up till then, turned cloudy with spits of rain that morning, but Tad, as usual, spent his time on deck with the mate. The river was high enough to make the passage of the Falls a possibility, and the _Ohio Belle_, shallow of draft like all the river steamers, took the white water safely. The rain increased in the afternoon, and Tad was finally driven inside out of the wet. He had paid very little attention to his fellow passengers on the voyage so far. But now, for something to do, he strolled down the inside passageway to the main saloon. It was just before he reached the cabin companion that he passed a door standing ajar and heard men talking angrily. Suddenly one voice rose to a shout and a chair was pushed back with a violent scraping noise. Then the door opened, and in it, with his back to Tad, stood a tall man in shabby, well-cut clothes. The fellow swayed a little and caught the door-jamb with one hand. With the other he flung a pack of dirty playing-cards back into the room. Then he spoke in a thick, choking voice. “You’ve cleaned me,” he said. “You’ve got my last cent, curse you! But I’ll be back, and don’t you forget it!” As he turned to leave he almost fell over Tad, and the boy was startled by the look of ferocity on his white, drawn face--a face he knew and had begun to fear. With long strides the man reached the end of the passage, then checked himself in the act of turning the corner, and glanced back at Tad as if he remembered something. An instant later he was gone. The other gamblers in the stateroom were silent for a moment after his departure. Then one of them burst into a loud guffaw. “So he’ll be back, eh!” he cried. “That’s a good ’un. Who’d lend him a plugged nickel on board here?”