"Yes? I stopped at Menard's on my way down from St Louis." "When was that?" "About ten days ago--tell you in a minute--Monday a week!" A big quarto loose-leaf notebook had revealed the day and date. "Well, say--I----?" Carline's one question leaped to his lips but remained unasked. For the minute he could not ask it. The thing that had been his rage, and then his wonder, suddenly drew back into his heart as a secret sorrow. "Won't you come over?" Carline asked, "it'd be company!" "Yes, it'll be company," the other admitted, and with a pull of his oars brought the skiff alongside. He climbed aboard, painter in hand, and making the light line fast to one of the cleats, sat down on the locker across from his host. "My name's Carline." "Mine's Lester Terabon; a newspaper let me come down the river to write stories about it; it's the biggest thing I ever saw!" "It's an awful size!" Carline admitted, looking around over his shoulder, and Terabon watched the face. "Are you a river man?" the visitor asked. "No. My father was a big farmer, and he made some money when they put a railroad through one of his places." "Just tripping down to see the river?" "No-o--well----" Carline hesitated, looking overside at the water. "That must be Wolf Island over there?" the reporter suggested. Carline looked at the island. He looked down the main river and over toward the chute toward which the Columbus bluffs had shunted them. Then he started the motor and steered into the main channel to escape the rippling shoals which flickered in the sunshine ahead of them, past an island sandbar. "I don't know if it's Wolf Island." Carline shook his head. "I'm looking for somebody--somebody who came down this way." The traveller waited. He looked across the current to the bluffs now passing up stream, Columbus and all. "I don't suppose you find very much to write about, coming down?" Carline changed his mind. For answer Terabon drew his skiff alongside and reached for his typewriter. As he began to write, he said: "I write everything down--big or little. A man can't remember everything, you know." "Make good money writing for the newspapers?" "Enough to live on," Terabon replied, "and, of course, it's living, coming down Old Mississip'!" "You like it travelling in that skiff? Where do you sleep?" "I stretch that canvas between the gunwales in those staples; I put those hoops up, and draw a canvas over the whole length of the boat. I can sleep like a baby in its cradle." "Well, that's one way," Carline replied, doubtfully. "If I owned this old river, you could buy it for two cents." Terabon laughed, and after a minute Carline joined in, but he had told the truth. He hated the river, and he was cowed by it; yet he could not escape its clutches. "I fancy it hasn't always treated you right," Terabon remarked. "Treated me right!" Carline doubled his fists and stiffened where he sat. "It's!--it's----"