I soon found, however, that all the men on board who had known Wylie, from Warrick down, vied with each other in treating her with a sort of patronizing respect; even Jake, the black cook, was continually sending up little messes for her and Joe. She was but a poor mouse of a woman, who had made a god of that stupid little weak-eyed fellow, and of his boy after he was gone; take her on politics, or even gossip, anything outside of Wylie and her child, and there was nothing in her. Warrick told me that she had never been outside of Cairo before, and the near village of Blandville, where she had been a sempstress before her marriage; this journey was like a glimpse of a new world to her. I used to see her sitting in a dark corner on deck until late in the night, her eyes strained over the long stretch of shore as we floated by; and I could understand how the heavy, wooded hills, crouching like sullen beasts along the water’s edge, or the miles and miles of yellow cane-brake lying flat and barren in the desolate, homesick twilight of a winter’s day, might have a different meaning to the lonely woman, and to us, who counted them only as “a run” of so many hours. She was sitting this way one evening on our back trip, when the boat stopped to wood at a place called by the boatmen Dead Man’s Riffle. Warrick was near me, watching her. “She wears black,” he said, at last. “Now for me,” cutting off a quid of tobacco, “I never believed Joe Wylie was dead. No, it was a bad bit of work, dead or alive,--bad.” “It is work I would give much to see cleared up, before I die,” I said. Warrick and I were walking up and down the hurricane-deck. “Would you?” he said, slowly, chewing and glancing up at me,--“would you? There’s a way. But no matter--” stopping short and looking ashamed. I said nothing. I never urge a man to speak, if he has ever so little mind to hold his tongue quiet. But Warrick had some notion that troubled him. He walked nearer at each turn to the place where a stout, short young woman was sitting, dressed in brown linsey. There was nothing remarkable about her face, which was heavy and dull, if we except a pair of thick, dead, fishy gray eyes. “Do you see that girl?” he jerked out. “Many of the men aboard would say that she could tell you anything you want to know; the dead are about her all the time, they say. _I_ don’t say it, Captain, mind; I’m not such a fool.”