Lester Terabon accepted the possibility of river lore and proclaimed beliefs. Fishermen, store-boaters, trippers, pirates, and all sorts of the shanty-boaters whom he had interviewed on his way down had solemnly assured him that there were spirits who promenaded down mid-stream, and who sometimes could be seen. Terabon was sorry when his cool, calculating mind refused to believe his eyes, which saw shapes; his flesh, which felt creeps; his ears, which heard voices; and his nostrils, which caught a whiff of a faint, sweet perfume more exquisite than any which he remembered. He knew that when he had kissed the river goddess whose eyes were blue, whose flesh was fair, whose grace was lovely, he had tasted that nectar and sniffed that ambrosia. He wondered if she were near him, watching to see whether he performed well the task which she had set for him, the rescue of the husband who had forfeited her love, and yet who still was under her protection since in his indignant sorrow he had supposed himself capable of finding and retaining her. Terabon would have liked nothing better than to believe what the Grecians used to believe, that goddesses and gods do come down to the earth to mingle among mankind. He fought the impossibility with his reason, and night winds laughed at him, while the voices of the waves chuckled at his predicament. They assailed him with their presence like living things, and then roared away to give room to new voices and new presences. "Anyhow," Terabon laughed, in spite of himself, "you're good company, Old Mississip'!" Yet he felt the chilling and depressing possibility that he might never again see that woman who would remain as a "river goddess" in his imagination. He had been heart-free, a bystander in the world's affairs. Now he knew what it was to see the memory of a woman rise unbidden to disturb his calculations; more than that, too, he was a part of the affairs of the River People. As a reporter "back home" he had never been able quite to reconcile himself to his constant position as a spectator, a neutral observer, obliged to write news without feeling and impartially. A politician could look him in the eye and tell him any smooth lie, and he could not, with white heat, deny the statement. He could not rise with his own strength to champion the cause of what he knew to be right against wrong; he could not elaborate on the details of things that he felt most interested in, but must consult the fancies of a not-particularly discriminating public, whose average intelligence, according to some learned students, must be placed at seventeen-years plus. As he was twenty-four plus, Terabon was immensely discouraged with the public when he had set forth down the Mississippi.