ills of her uncle Dan's and
Phyllis's dark story; persevered in sleep though John Courteney's son,
her profoundest marvel, was once more up and out, with the story still
on his heart and "a-happmin' yit." It was one of its happenings that,
very naturally, though quite unreasonably, he begrudged the sleeper's
absence from texas roof and pilot-house.

The _Votaress_ was under full headway, with Vicksburg astern, Watson
again at the wheel and the captain in his chair. The most northerly of
the Walnut Hills were on the starboard bow. Beyond them the sun, rising
into thunder-clouds, poured a dusty-yellow light over the tops of their
almost unbroken woods, here and there brightening with a strange
vividness the tilled fields and white homestead and slave quarters of
some noted plantation. Between the hills and the river lay a mile's
breadth or more of densely forested swamp, or "bottom," swarming with
reptiles great and small, abounding in deer, bear, and panther, and from
which, though the buffalo had been long banished, the wolf was not yet
gone. On the skylight roof, close "abaft the bell," as Ramsey would have
said, stood the commodore and Hugh. They had just met there and after a
casual word or so Hugh was about to say something requiring an effort,
when they were joined by the exhorter.

"Mawnin', gentle-_men_," he said. "Now, what you reckon them-ah po'
Gawd-fo'-saken'd Eu-_rope_-ians down-stahs air a-thinkin' to theyse'v's
whilst they view this-yeh lan'scape o'? D'you reckon they eveh, ev'm in
they dreams o' heav'm, see sich

"'Sweet fiel's beyond the swellin' flood
Stand deck' in livin' green'?

"I tell you, gentle-_men_, as sho' as man made the city an' Gawd made
the country, he made this-yeh country last, when he'd got his hand in!
You see that-ah house an' cedah grove on yan rise? Well, that's the old
'Good Luck Plantation.' Gid Hayle 'uz bawn thah. His fatheh went to Gawd
f'om thah an' lef' it to Dan, the pilot, what 'uz lost on the
_Qua'_--Hell! listen at me! As ef _you_ didn't know that, which ev'y
sight o' you stahts folks a-talkin' about it! But, Lawd! what a country
this-yeh 'Azoo Delta is, to be sho'! Fo' craps! All this-yeh Mis'sippi
Riveh, you mowt say, fo'm Cairo down, an' th' 'Azoo fo' the top-rail!
Fo' craps--an' the money-makin'est craps! An' jest as much fo' game! Not
pokeh but wile game; fo'-footen beasts afteh they kind an' fowl afteh
they kind. An' ef a country's great fo' craps _a