“_I_ hadn’t reformed then, eh?” queried Fred. “You? why you’re one of the very fellows I dodged! Just as I got aboard the boat--I came down late, on purpose--I saw you out aft. I tell you, I was under my blankets, with a towel wrapped around my jaw, in about one minute, and was just _a-praying_ that you hadn’t seen me come aboard.” Fred laughed, but his laughter soon made place for a look of tender solicitude. The unexpected turn that had been reached in the conversation he had so dreaded, and the sympathy which had been awakened in him by Crayme’s confidence and openness, temporarily made of Fred Macdonald a man with whom Fred himself had never before been acquainted. A sudden idea struck him. “Sam,” said he, “try it over again, and _I’ll_ stay by you. I’ll nurse you, crack jokes, fight off the blues for you, keep your friends away. I’ll even break your neck for you, if you like, seeing it’s you if it’ll keep you straight.” “Will you, though?” said the captain, with a look of admiration undisguised, except by wonder. “You’re the first friend I ever had, then. By thunder! how marrying Ettie Wedgewell _did_ improve you, Fred! But,” and the captain’s face lengthened again, “there’s a fellow’s reputation to be considered, and where’ll mine be after it gets around that I’ve sworn off?” “Reputation be hanged!” exclaimed Fred. “_Lose_ it, for your wife’s sake. Besides, you’ll _make_ reputation instead of lose it: you’ll be as famous as the Red River Raft, or the Mammoth Cave--the only thing of the kind west of the Alleghanies. As for the boys, tell them I’ve bet you a hundred that you can’t stay off your liquor for a year, and that you’re not the man to take a dare.” “_That_ sounds like business,” exclaimed the captain, springing to his feet. “Let me draw up a pledge,” said Fred eagerly, drawing pen and ink toward him. “No, you don’t, my boy,” said the captain gently, and pushing Fred out of the room and upon the guards. “Emily shall do that. Below there!--Perkins, I’ve got to go up town for an hour; see if you can’t pick up freight to pay laying-up expenses somehow. Fred, go home and get your traps; ‘now’s the accepted time,’ as your father-in-law has dinged at me, many a Sunday, from the pulpit.” CHAPTER XIV. SAILING UP STREAM. As Sam Crayme strode toward the body of the town, his business instincts took strong hold of his sentiments, in the manner natural alike to saints and sinners, and he laid a plan of operations against whiskey which was characterized by the apparent recklessness but actual prudence which makes for glory in steamboat captains, as it does in army commanders. As was his custom in business, he first drove at full speed upon the greatest obstacles; so it came to pass that he burst into his own house, threw his arm around his wife with more than ordinary tenderness, and then looking into her eyes with the daring born of utter desperation, said,