He could not speak for his emotion, but his little pointed chin trembled a minute later as he relaxed and looked over his shoulder again. The typewriter clicked along for minutes, Terabon's fingers dancing over the keys as he put down, word for word, and motion for motion, the man who was afraid of the river and yet was tripping down it. It seemed as though the man afraid must have some kind of courage, too, because he was going in spite of his fears. "It's passing noon, and I think I'll get something to eat," Terabon suggested; "I'll get up my----" "I forgot to eat!" Carline said. "I've got everything, and that knob there is a three-burner oil stove. We'll eat on board. Never mind your stuff, I've got so much it'll spoil--but I ain't much of a cook!" "I'm the original cook the Caesars wanted to buy for gold!" Terabon boasted. "I got some squirrels, there, I killed up on Buffalo Island, and we'll fry them." Nor did he fail to make his boast good, for he soon had hot-bread, gravy browned in the pan, boiled sweet potatoes, and canned corn ready for the table. When they sat down to eat, Carline confessed that he hadn't had a real meal for a week except one he ate in a Cairo restaurant. "I could have got a kind of a meal," he admitted, "but you see I was worried a good deal. Did you stop at Stillhouse Island?" "Where's that?" "Just above Gage, kind of across from St. Genevieve." "Let's see--oh, yes. There was an old fellow there, what's his name? He told me if I happened to see his daughter I should tell her to write him, for her mother wanted to hear." "He said that! And you--it was Crele, Darien Crele said that?" "That's the name--Nelia, his daughter." "Yes, sir. I know. I guess I know! She's my wife--she was--It's her----" "You're looking for?" "Yes, sir; she ran away and left me. She came down here." "Kind of a careless girl, I imagine?" "Careless! God, no! The finest woman you ever saw. It was me--I was to blame. I never knew, I never knew!" For a minute he held up his arms, looking tensely at the sky, struggling to overcome the emotion that long had been boiling up in his heart, rending the self-complacency of his mind. Then he broke down--broke down abjectly, and fell upon the cabin floor, crying aloud in his agony, while the newspaper man sitting there whispered to himself: "Poor devil, here's a story! He's sure getting his. I don't want to forget this; got to put this down. Poor devil!" CHAPTER XIII "And he says he's a sinner himself," Nelia repeated, when she returned on board her cabin-boat in the sheltering safety of Wolf Island chute, with Mamie Caope, Parson Rasba, and the other shanty-boaters within a stone's toss of her.