t the talk of the
bishop and others could charm most of them away even from the judge's
nervous sister, who, nevertheless, amid such remote themes as Jenny
Lind, Nebraska, coming political conventions, and the new speed record
of the big _Eclipse_ in the fourteen hundred and forty miles from New
Orleans, could not help a light start now and then. It was good, to Hugh
and to Ramsey, to see how the actor, Gilmore, despite this upward
seepage of ghostly cries--faint notes of horror, anguish, and
despair--attenuated groans and wailings of bodily agony--held the eyes
of the ladies nearest him with tales of travel and the theatre, and
mention of the great cut-off of 1699, which they would soon pass and
must notice. But quite as good was it to the wives of Vicksburg and
Milliken's Bend to observe with what fluency Hugh, commonly so quiet,
discoursed to Mrs. Gilmore and to Ramsey on other river features near at
hand: Dead Man's Bend, Ellis Cliffs, Natchez Island, the crossing above
it, Saint Catherine's Creek, and Natchez itself.

"Where I was born!" said Ramsey. "Largest town in Mississippi and the
most stuck-up."

The other Mississippians laughed delightedly.

"We stop there," said Hugh, "to put off freight."

"Mr. Courteney," asked Ramsey, "what _is_ a 'crossing'?"

There were new lower-deck noises to drown and Hugh welcomed the slender
theme. "The channel of a great river in flat lands," he said, "is a
river within a river. It frets against its walls of slack water----"

"I see!--as the whole river does against its banks!"

"Yes. Wherever the shore bends, the current, when strong, keeps straight
on across the slack water till it hits the bend. Then it swerves just
enough to rush by, and miles below hits the other shore, swerves again,
and crosses in another long slant down there."

"Except where it breaks through and makes a cut-off!"

"But a cut-off is an event. This goes on all the time, in almost every
reach; so that pilots, whether running down-stream in the current or
up-stream in the slack water, cross the river about as often as the
current does."

"Hence the term!" laughed Ramsey.

"I think so. You might ask Mr. Watson."

"No, I'll ask him what a reach is--and a towhead--and a pirooter--oh,
don't you love this river?"

While the talk thus flowed, what delicacies--pastries, ices, fruits--had
come in and served their ends! But also against what sounds from the
underworld had each utterance still to mak