The doctor said Prebol ought to go into the hospital for at least a week, and Terabon found Prebol's pirate friends, hidden up the slough on their boat, not venturing to go out except at night. They took the little red shanty-boat up the slough, and Prebol went to the hospital. Rasba, frankly curious about the man who wrote for newspapers for a living, listened to accounts of an odd and entertaining occupation. He asked about the Palura shooting which everyone was talking about, and when Terabon described it as he had witnessed it, Rasba shook his head. "Now they'll close up that big market of sin?" he asked. "They've all scattered around." "Yes, and they scattered with my skiff, too, and probably robbed Carline of his boat----" "Carline! You know him?" "I came down with him from Yankee Bar, and we went up to Palura's together. I lost him in the shuffle, when the big cop killed Palura." "And Mrs. Carline, Nelia Crele?" Rasba demanded. "Why--I--they said she'd landed in. She's gone, too----" "You know her?" "Why, yes--I----" "So do I. Those books," he waved his hand toward the loaded shelves, "she gave them all to me for my mission boat!" Terabon stared. He went to the shelves and looked at the volumes. In each one he found the little bookmark which she had used in cataloguing them: Nelia Carline, A Loved Book. No. 87 A jealous pang seized him, in spite of his reportorial knowledge that jealousy is vanity for a literary person. "I 'low we mout 's well drop out," Rasba suggested. "Missy Crele's down below some'rs. Her boat floated out to'd mornin', one of the boys said." CHAPTER XXX Carline had discovered his wife in the excitement at Palura's, and with the cunning of a drunken man had shadowed her. He followed her down to Mousa Bayou, and saw her go on board her cabin-boat. He watched, with more cunning, to see for whom she was waiting. He had in his pocket a heavy automatic pistol with which to do murder. He had seen killing done, and the thing was fascinating; some consciousness that the policeman had done the right thing seemed now to justify his own intention of killing a man, or somebody. Disappointment lingered in his mind when the lights went out on board Nelia's boat, and for a long time he meditated as to what he should do. He saw skiffs, motorboats, shanty-boats pulling hastily down the slough into the Mississippi. It was the Exodus of Sin. Mendova's rectitude had asserted its strength and power, and now the exits of the city were flickering with the shadows of departing hordes of the night and of the dark, all of whom had two fears: one of daylight, the other of sudden death.