while he so mused--at the same time doing his best to give Mrs.
Gilmore his whole attention--Ramsey, with her back turned yet vividly
aware of him, willing--preferring--that he should hear alone from that
lady what she would later draw from him, and ardently mindful of his
word that he "wanted her help," was not merely gathering facts regarding
her beloved river but was also deep in diplomacy, endeavoring with all
her youthful arts, such as they were, to help him.

Her manoeuvres were fairly good. To her it seemed as though this
spirit of strife so electrically pervading the _Votaress_ might yet be
tranquilized through a war of wits exclusively and she was using her own
with the tactical nimbleness of the feminine mind. She knew the twins
were down on the boiler deck again, one faint, yet both pursuing, egged
on by him of the stallion's eye and him of the eagle's, and all the more
socially and dangerously active because, by strict orders to every one,
cut off from the gaming-table and the bar. She could not do a hundred
things at once--though she could do six or seven--and it was well to
grapple this one task first. Thus she kept Hugh free to confer with the
player's wife as to "Harriet."

Her husband, the wife told Hugh, had drawn "Harriet" from the water just
as Dan Hayle sank, and husband and wife had concealed her on their
flatboat, unable to resist her wild appeal not to be given back into
slavery.

"We didn't dream she'd done anything wrong; she didn't tell us that for
years. Players, Mr. Hugh, don't meddle much in politics and we'd never
thought whether we were for slavery or against it until there was the
whole awful question sprung on us in an instant."

"So you took her----?"

"For my maid, yes--on wages, of course--down to New Orleans--we were
bound there--and kept her when we went North and ever since."

"And she's always been----?"

"Well-behaved, faithful, kind, and wise. That one terrible deed, which
she says you know all about----"

"I do."

"It seemed to change the very foundations of her character, to convert
her soul."

"Yes," said Hugh, as if speaking from experience.

"Yet she kept her high spirit. She would never put on a disguise. And
really that was safest since she wasn't being looked for by any one.
'I'm no advertised runaway,' she said. Still she's never been foolhardy.
She'd never have come--we'd never have brought her--aboard this boat
could we have foreseen the mishap to her