Somewhere among the confused piles was the tale of the last voyage of the little stern-wheel steamer, “Morning Star” to the ferry, under command of “Cap’n Sink.” She had come up from the Illinois river, and the falling waters had left her stranded for a week on a sand bar. Her doughty commander paced the deck and blistered it with profanity. He swore by nine gods that he never again would go above “Corkscrew Bend,” that was so crooked that even the fish had sense enough to keep out of it. His vociferous impiety filtered intermittently through the green foliage that overhung the river, and desecrated the shadow-flecked aisles of the forest, until the Morning Star’s sister boat, the “Damfino,” came wheezing up stream. The unfortunate craft was pulled off the bar and navigation officially ended. Reliable data was becoming scarce. Bill’s recollections were getting hazy. The old settlers, whose memories could be relied upon, were dying off, and the mists were absorbing his ascertainable facts, but, while life lasts the chronicles will go on, for Bill’s genius is not of the sort that admits defeat. There is much human history that might with profit be entombed in these humble archives, and its obscurity would be a blessing to those who made it. As the world grows older it finds less to respect in the dusty tomes that are filled with the story of human folly, selfishness and needless bloodshed. Bill and I were enjoying a quiet smoke on the store platform one July afternoon, and discussing his historical labors. “We’r livin’ in ter’ble times, an’ the things that’s happenin’ now mops ev’ry thing else offen the map,” he declared, as he refilled his cob pipe. “I see things in my paper ev’ry week that oughta be noted down in my history, but I’m pretty near eighty, an’ if I try to put ’em all in I’ll never git through. There’s too damn much goin’ on. They’r ditchin’ the river an’ hell’s to pay up above. They’r blastin’ in the woods with dinnymite, an’ some o’ them ol’ codgers that lives in them shacks up above English Lake’ll be blown to kingdom come if they don’t watch out an’ duck. They better wake up an’ come down stream. Say, d’ye see that damn cuss comin’ over the bridge? That’s Rat Hyatt, an’ I’m goin’ to jump ’im when ’e gits ’ere. He lost my dog I let ’im take. That feller’s no good, an’ ’e’s ripenin’ fer damnation.” “Muskrat Hyatt” was a tall, raw-boned, keen-eyed ne’er-do-well sort of a fellow, who had hunted and trapped on the river for many years. He lived in an old house boat that had floated down stream during high water one spring, and got wedged in among some big trees in the woods, about half a mile above the bridge. He moved into it when the waters subsided and found it an agreeable abode.