“Yes, sir,--oh, yes, sir,--I seen him plain,” the swamper replied casually, but he did not relax the keenness of his inquisitive observation of the stranger beside him, nor even again glance at the boat. “Did you ever before see him?” The question was less a gasp than a convulsive snap,--it was articulated in such a paroxysm of excitement. “Yes, sir,--oh, yes, sir.” “Do you know his name?” “Yes, sir,--oh, yes, sir.” The swamper’s replies were as mechanical as the ticking of a clock. The stranger turned, lowered the binocle and glanced at him with an odd blending of animosity and contempt. The swamper was of an aspect queerly disheveled, water-soaked and damaged, collapsed almost out of all semblance of humanity. He suggested some distorted bit of unclassified and worthless flotsam of the great river, washed ashore in one of its stupendous floods and left high and dry with other foul detritus when the annual shrinkage regained once more low water mark. He was an elderly man with a pallid, pasty face, large, pouch-like cheeks and a sharp rodential nose. His small, bright eyes were so furtive of expression that they added to his rat-like intimations and he had a long bedraggled grizzled beard. He wore trousers of muddy corduroy, and a ragged old gray sweater. His sodden, diluvian, pulpy aspect would justify the illusion that he had been drowned a time or two, resuscitated and dried out, each immersion leaving traces in slime, and ooze, and water-stains on his garments and character. He must have seemed incongruous, indeed, with the acquaintance he claimed, for it was a most commanding and memorable figure focused by the lenses. “Who is he, then,--what is his name?” the stranger asked with sudden heat, as if he fancied some deception was practiced upon him, and evidently all unaware that he had himself, in the surprise of the first glimpse, pronounced aloud the name he sought. His interlocutor discerned his incredulity and replied with a flout. “Who? him?--that old blow-hard? Why ever’ body all up an’ down the ruver knows old Cunnel Kenwynton.” “God!” exclaimed the wild-eyed stranger, with a most poignant intonation, “to doubt my own sight,--my own memory,--my”--he became suddenly conscious of that sinister scrutiny, so much more discriminating and intelligent than accorded with the status of the water-rat that it had an inimical suggestion. He broke off with an abrupt air of explanation. “I have been under treatment for--for--an ocular difficulty, my eyes, you know.” “Edzac’ly,” exclaimed the swamper, with a tone of bland acceptance of the statement. “Well, now, Mister, I thought your eyes appeared queer.” “Do they?” asked the stranger with an inexplicable eagerness. “Have they an odd expression,--to your mind?” “Why, I dunno ez I would have tooken notice of it, but my darter-in-law, Jessy Jane, remarked it las’ night. She is mighty keen, though, Jessy Jane is,--an’ spies out mos’ ever’ think.”