Then a woman had come floating down, a beautiful strange woman whose voice had clutched at his heart, whose smile had deprived him of reason, whose eyes had searched his soul. With tears on her lashes she had flung to him that treasure-store of learning, and gone on her way, leaving him strength and consolation. He left his treasure and went out to look at the river. Everybody leaves everything to look at the river! There is nothing in the world that will prevent it. He saw, in the bright morning, that Prebol had raised his curtain, and was looking at the river, too, though the effort must have caused excruciating pain in his wounded shoulder. Day was growing; from end to end of that vast, flowing sheet of water thousands upon thousands of old river people were taking a look at the Mississippi. Rasba carried a good broth over to Prebol for breakfast, and then returned to his cabin, having made Prebol comfortable and put a dozen of the wonderful books within his reach. Then the River Prophet sat down to read his treasures, any and all of them, his lap piled up, three or four books in one hand and trying to turn the pages of another in his other hand by unskilful manipulation of his thumb. He was literally starving for the contents of those books. He was afraid that his treasure would escape from him; he kept glancing from his printed page to the serried ranks on the crap table, and his hands unconsciously felt around to make sure that the weight on his lap and in his grasp was substantial and real, and not a dream or vision of delight. He forgot to eat; he forgot that he had not slept; he sat oblivious of time and river, the past or the future; he grappled with pages of print, with broadsides of pictures, with new and thrilling words, with sentences like hammer blows, with paragraphs that marched like music, with thoughts that had the gay abandon of a bird in song. And the things he learned! When night fell he was dismayed by his weariness, and could not understand it. For a little while he ransacked his dulled wits to find the explanation, and when he had fixed Prebol for the night, with medicine, water, and a lamp handy to matches, he told the patient: "Seems like the gimp's kind of took out of me. My eyes are sore, an' I doubt am I quite well." "Likely yo' didn't sleep well," Prebol suggested. "A man cayn't sleep days if he ain't used to hit." "Sleep days?" Rasba looked wildly about him. "Sho! When did I git to sleep, why, I ain't slept--I----Lawse!" Prebol laughed aloud. "Yo' see, Parson, yo' all cayn't set up all night with a pretty gal an' not sleep hit off. Yo' shore'll git tired, sportin' aroun'." "Sho!" Rasba snapped, and then a smile broke across his countenance. He cried out with laughter, and admitted: "Hit's seo, Prebol! I neveh set up with a gal befo' I come down the riveh. Lawse! I plumb forgot."