Set there breathing quick, and, when he could speak, all he said was, 'This is the end of it for me on the river, Jim Davis,' Reached up over his head for his coat where it hung by that window, Trembled onto his feet, and stopped in the door there a second, Stared in hard like as if for good-by to the things he was used to, Shut the door behind him, and never come back again through it." While we were silent, not liking to prompt the pilot with questions, "Well," he said, at last, "it was no use to argue. We tried it, In the half-hearted way that people do that don't mean it. Every one was his friend here on the _Kanawha_, and _we_ knew It was the first time he ever had lost his bearings, but _he_ knew, In such a thing as that, that the first and the last are the same time. When we had got through trying our worst to persuade him, he only Shook his head and says, 'I am done for, boys, and you know it,' Left the boat at Wheeling, and left his life on the river-- Left his life on the earth, you may say, for I don't call it living, Setting there homesick at home for the wheel he can never go back to. Reads the river-news regular; knows just the stage of the water Up and down the whole way from Cincinnati to Pittsburg; Follows every boat from the time she starts out in the spring-time Till she lays up in the summer, and then again in the winter; Wants to talk all about her and who is her captain and pilot; Then wants to slide away to that everlastingly puzzling Thing that happened to him that morning on the _Kanawha_ When he lost his bearings and North and South had changed places-- No, I don't call that living, whatever the rest of you call it." We were silent again till that woman spoke up, "And what was it, Captain, that kept him from going back and being a pilot?" "Well, ma'am," after a moment the pilot patiently answered, "_I_ don't hardly believe that I could explain it exactly." IV THE RETURN TO FAVOR He never, by any chance, quite kept his word, though there was a moment in every case when he seemed to imagine doing what he said, and he took with mute patience the rakings which the ladies gave him when he disappointed them.