es were vacant. The bar was
closed. Out on the dim boiler deck he found only the two who had fleeced
Basile. They sat at the very front, elbow to elbow, with their feet up
on the rail. Their quiet talk ceased as he came near and stood looking
out over the gliding bow and the waters beyond, which were out of their
banks and stretched everywhere off into the night, a veritable deluge.

"A good forty miles wide, no doubt," he remarked to the pair, and they
assured him he was right.

"What piece of river is this?" he inquired, and was told that they were
in the long, winding, desolate sixty-mile stretch between White River
and Horseshoe Bend; that they had just put Islands Sixty-two and
Sixty-three astern and would be more than two hours yet in reaching
Helena.

"Arkansas your State?" he asked. "Helena your town?"

"No," they said, they were of the "hoop-pole State," meaning Indiana. He
knew better but changed the subject. "The Ohio," he remarked, "must be
up on her hind legs."

"Yes, everything was up: the Saint Francis, the Tennessee, Cumberland,
Illinois, Wabash, Kentucky, Miami, Scioto--" The pair did not talk like
men narrowly of the hoop-pole commonwealth. Modestly speaking on, they
seemed to know the whole great valley quite by heart.

So the senator, to show how quite by heart he knew this whole little
world, said affably: "The pan-fish ain't biting so very lively this
trip."

The reply was as flawless for candor as though they had the same hope to
use him which he had to use them. Said one:

"No, we ain't paying expenses."

And his mate: "We've caught a few little flappers."

"Captain's son make it hard to do business?"

"Oh, he--we've all got our prejudices, you know."

"Yes, you ought to have some against him by now."

"Maybe so. You've got yourn, senator, we've noticed."

"I? No! I admire him. The way he runs this cabin----"

"Makes her keep up with the boat," they admitted.

"I never saw his like," laughed the statesman.

"Wouldn't want to, would you?"

"N-no, he makes big mistakes. But--he's got a future!"

"So mind his heels," said one of the pair. They were enjoying their
politician. He saw that by their gravity. In their world men looked
gravest when amused, and saved their smiles for emergencies. While he
offered, and they accepted, cigars he spoke absently:

"The young gentleman's making a mistake right now that he ought to be
saved from."

"Another?" they dryly asked as they us