e critic gave her a fresh
scrutiny from cutwater to stern rail, from freight guards to the
oak-leaf crown on either chimney-top.

"Why, commodore, she knocks the hindsights off the old _Votaress_ every
way. You'll see that mighty quick."

"Humph, yes; best yet, of the Courteney type. Ridiculous, how they hang
to that. I'll build a boat to beat her inside a year if old Abe ain't
elected. If he is, we'll just build gunboats and raise particular hell."
On the skylight the speaker amiably declined to climb any higher.

"No, us two Kentuck's will try it here." The pair found seats together,
and soon the Californian was making the best of an opportunity he, no
less than Gideon Hayle, had coveted for eight years. It interested him
keenly, as affording a glimpse into the famous boatman's character, that
the latter showed a grasp of the dreadful voyage's story as vivid and
clear in each of its two versions--the mother and daughter's and the
twins'--as though the intervening months had been one instead of a
hundred--and two.

They rehearsed together the arrival of the _Votaress_ at Louisville in
the dead of night; confessed the folly of any "outsider" seeking the
grief-burdened Gideon's ear in that first hour of reunion with his
family, and the equal unwisdom of his pressing, in such an hour, an
acute personal question upon Hugh and his grandfather who, at Paducah,
had just buried John Courteney.

"And you've never pressed it sence?" asked "California."

"Mm-no."

"Nor let either o' them press it?"

"No!"--a sturdy oath--"nor you nor anybody alive. Go on with your
story."

The gold hunter went on unruffled; told it as he had seen it occur;
recounted, among other things, how, on the final landing of the
immigrants, at Cairo, Marburg and not a few besides had covered Madame
Hayle's hands with kisses and tears and would have done Hugh Courteney's
so could they have got at him. His hearer frowned and set his big jaw,
but the narrative flowed on, describing how, like Marburg, many had
waved affectionate farewells to Hugh and to Ramsey which she could guess
no reason for in her case except her own wet eyes, but which
"California" saw was because, through himself and Phyllis, the
immigrants had found her out as another who believed in letting the
oppressed go free and come free. He told even those irrelevant things
about himself which had made him ludicrous. They imparted a needed
lightness and kindled the big commodore's sm