The officious young secretary advanced from his corner with what was intended for a threatening scowl, but Tad paid no attention to him. Then Jeremiah Hopkins must have sensed that something was happening, for he looked up wearily from the papers in his hands and saw a boy at the gate--a ragged, barefoot youngster, brown as an Indian, with a mop of sandy hair and a mouth that grinned broadly while his eyes blinked back something suspiciously like tears. “D-don’t you know me, Dad?” said the boy. And then Jeremiah Hopkins ran toward him and they caught each other in a bear-like hug. The father’s heart was too full for words, but he held the lad at arm’s length and looked at him as if he could never get enough of the sight. Tad’s power of speech came back to him first, and he talked in happy, jumbled sentences, trying to tell everything at once. “I wrote to you, Dad,” he said, “but, you see, you never got my letter because it was blown up. It was on the _Nancy Jones_. But it’s too bad you worried so about me. I was all right. Abe, here, was taking care of me, and-- Come, I want you to meet him. Abe--” But the young husky from Indiana was gone. He had slipped out quietly as soon as he saw his friend safe in his father’s arms. Tad ran down the stairs and looked up and down the street, but the lanky figure was nowhere in sight. Distressed, he returned to his father. “We must find him,” he said. “You’ve got to know Abe, because he’s the best friend I ever had. Why, he saved my life!” The young secretary, very crestfallen, came forward. “I--I think he went toward the levee, sir,” said he. “You should have asked him to wait,” the merchant answered curtly. “We’ll go in search of him directly, Tad, my boy. But first come and get some clothes on.” They got into the carriage and were driven, despite the boy’s protestations, to Mr. Hopkins’ hotel, where the clothes found in the stateroom on the steamboat had been taken. In a few minutes Tad was dressed once more in the garb of civilization. “Now,” said he, “tell the coachman we want to go to the flatboat moorings as fast as he can drive.” Through the streets and along the levee they rumbled and drew up at last where Tad pointed to the _Katy Roby_, tied up in the middle of the swarming river-craft. But Abe and Allen were nowhere to be seen. The stout Kentucky man sat on the rail of his boat, near the levee, and spat judicially into the river before he answered Tad’s eager query. “No,” said he, finally. “They ain’t here. They done picked up their blankets an’ stuff an’ put out fer the steamboat landin’ some while back. Said they was goin’ to go on the _Ohio Belle_ if they got thar ’fore she sailed.” Hurriedly the Hopkinses, father and son, climbed back into the carriage, and the coachman used his whip as they galloped toward the smoky forest of steamboat stacks. “She’s not gone yet,” cried Tad. “I can see her.”