When they went out to Parson Rasba, they found him calmly reading one of the books which she had given him. He looked up at their red faces and smiled with indulgence. They would never know what went on inside his heart, what was in his mind behind that kindly smile. That he knew and understood everything was clear to them, but they did not and would not have believed that he had, for a minute, hated Terabon as standing between him and happiness. "What are we going to do?" Terabon cried, when he had told the Parson that they loved each other, that they would complete the voyage down the river together, that her husband still lived, and that they could get a $17.50 divorce at Memphis. "Hit wouldn't be no 'count, that divorce." The Prophet shrugged his shoulders, and the two hung their heads. They knew it, and yet they had been willing to plead ignorance as an excuse for sin. He seemed to close the incident by suggesting that it was time to eat something, and the three turned to getting a square meal. They cooked a bountiful dinner, and sat down to it, the Prophet asking a blessing that seared the hearts of the two because of its fervour. Rasba asked her to read to them after they had cleared up the dishes, and she took down the familiar volumes and read. Rasba sat with his eyes closed, listening. Terabon watched her face. She seemed to choose the pages at random, and read haphazardly, but it was all delight and all poetry. She was reading, which was strange, the Humphrey-Abbott book about the Mississippi River levees, the classic report on river facts, all fascinating to the mind that grasps with pleasure any river fact. When Rasba looked up and smiled, the two were absorbed in their occupations, one reading, the other watching her read. She stopped in conscious confusion. "Yas, suh!" he smiled aloud. "I 'low we uns can leave hit to Old Mississip', these yeah things that trouble us: I, my triflin' doubts, and you children yo' own don't-know-yets." What made him say that, if he wasn't a River Prophet? Who told him, what voice informed him, at that moment? Who can say? The following morning the big mission boat and Missy Nelia's boat landed in at Memphis wharf, and the three went up town to buy groceries, newspapers and magazines to read, and to help Nelia choose another set of books from the shelves of local book stores. Old Rasba had never been in a book store before, and he stared at the hundreds of feet of shelves, with books of all sizes, kinds, and makes. "Sho!" he cried aloud, and then, again, "Sho! Sho!" It was fairyland for him, a land of enchantment, of impossible satisfaction and glory-be! Terabon and Nelia saw that they had given him another pleasure, and Rasba was happy to know that he would always be able to visit such places, and add to his own store of literature, when he had read the books which he had, as he would do, page by page, and word by word, his dictionary at hand.