ike desperation.

"Mammy," said her mistress, "want to go somewhere with your baby, about
sundown this evening?"

For explanation the old woman glanced at Phyllis, but Phyllis's eyes
were on Ramsey with a light whose burning carried old Joy's memory back
twenty years. "Sundown?" echoed the nurse to gain time, "yass'm, o'
co'se, ef--but, missie--sundown--dat mean' Natchez. You cayn't be goin'
asho' whah Cap'm Hugh dess tell Phyllis yo' ma comin' aboa'd?"

"Not ashore to stay," was the blithe reply as Phyllis aided the change
of dress. "There'll be two or three of us."

"Well, o' co'se, ef you needs me. Wha' fo' you gwine?"

"To see the twins," sang Ramsey, "if we go at all."

Then Phyllis knew she was trusted, and while with a puzzled frown the
nurse watched her manipulate hooks and eyes she blandly asked: "Miss
Ramsey, if Cap'm Hugh give' me leave kin I go too?"

"Yes, you might ask him. Nobody's going unless he goes."

The light came to old Joy. "Law'! missie, now you a-talkin'! Now you
a-talkin' wisdom! Dah's whah I's wid you, my baby. I's wid you right
dah, pra-a-aise Gawd!"

All three, parting company, were happier for several hours. But the
Californian's were not the only fond schemes, aboard the _Enchantress_,
that could go to wreck.

Nor had "California" met his last disappointment even on this journey.
As he and his reinforcements came out on the boiler deck with a hundred
others from the midday feast the deck-hands below, for quicker unloading
at Canal Street on the morrow, were shifting a lot of sacked corn from
the hold to the forecastle-deck and were timing their work to a chantey.
The song was innocently chosen in reference solely to the piece of river
in which they chanced then to be, but all the more for its innocence it
touched in that gentle knight a chord of sympathy.

"My own true love wuz lost an' found--
O hahd times!--
An' lost ag'in a-comin' round
Hahd Times Ben'.
Found an' lost, lost an' found,
An' lost ag'in a-comin' round
Hahd Times Ben'."[2]

So it ran, while the _Enchantress_ turned southeast with that Lake Saint
Joe of which "'Lindy" was "the pride" lying forest-hidden a few miles
away on the starboard beam. The melody opened with a prolonged wail on
its highest note and bore the tragic quality which so often marked the
songs of slavery. Helped on by names of near-by landmarks--the Big Black
River and the once perilous Grand Gul