He walked out on the deck where he could commune with the river, using his eyes, his ears, and the feeling that the warm afternoon gave him. The sun shone upon him, and made a narrow pathway across the rushing torrent. The sky was blue and cloudless. Of the cold, the wind, the sea of liquid mud, not one trace remained. He looked down and up the river, and his eyes caught a flicker which became a flutter, like the agitation of a duck preening its feathers on a smooth surface. He watched it for a long time. He did not know what it was. As a river man, his curiosity was excited, but there was something more than mere curiosity; the river instinct that the inexplicable and unknown should be watched and inquired into moved him almost unconsciously to watch that distant agitation which became a dot afloat in a mirage of light. A little later a sudden flash along the river surface disclosed that the thing was a shanty-boat turning in the coiling currents at the bend. The sun drew nearer the tree tops. The little cabin-boat was seeking a place to land or anchor for the night. If it was an old river man, the boat would drop into some little eddy at Caruthersville or down below; but a stranger on the river would likely shoot across into the gamblers' eddy tempted, perhaps, by the three boats already there. The boat drew swiftly near, and as it ran down, the navigator rowed to make the shanty-boat eddy. Parson Rasba discovered that it was a woman at the sweeps, and a few strokes later he knew that it was a slim, young woman. When she coasted down outside the eddy, to swing in at the foot, and arrived opposite him, he recognized her. "God he'p me!" he choked, "hit's Missy Nelia. Hit's Missy Nelia! An' she's a runned away married woman--an' theh's the man she shot!" "Hello-o, Parson!" she hailed him, "did you see a skiff with a reporter man drop by?" "No, missy!" he shook his head, his heart giving a painful thump "I'm a-landing in, Parson!" she cried. "I want to talk with you!" With that she leaned forward, drove the sweeps deep, and her boat started in like a skiff. It seemed to Parson Rasba that he had never seen a more beautiful picture in all his days. CHAPTER XXIII Lester Terabon rowed down the rolling river waters in the dark night. He had, of course, looked out into the Mississippi shades from the security of landing, anchorage, and sandbar; he knew the looks of the night but not the activities of currents and bends when a gale is sweeping by and the air is, by turns, penetrated by the hissing of darting whitecaps and the roar of the blustering winds.