nd I'll
get as much out of it one way as you will the other. What is your name?
I may have to borrow it."

"Gavitt--John Wesley Gavitt."

"All right; off with you," said the liberator, curtly; and with that he
shouldered the sick man's load and fell into line in the ant procession.

Once on board the steamer, he followed his file-leader aft and made it
his first care to find a safe hiding-place for the tramp's bundle in
the knotted handkerchief. That done, he stepped into the line again, and
became the sick man's substitute in fact.

Inured to hard living as he was, the substitute roustabout had made no
more than a half-dozen rounds between the levee and the cargo-deck of
the _Belle Julie_ before he was glad to note that the steamer's lading
was all but completed. It was toil of the shrewdest, and he drew breath
of blessed relief when the last man staggered up the plank with his
burden. The bell was clanging its final summons, and the slowly
revolving paddle-wheels were taking the strain from the mooring lines.
Being near the bow line Griswold was one of the two who sprang ashore at
the mate's bidding to cast off. He was backing the hawser out of the
last of its half-hitches when a carriage was driven rapidly down to the
stage and two tardy passengers hurried aboard. The mate bawled from his
station on the hurricane-deck.

"Now, then! Take a turn on that spring line out there and get them
trunks aboard! Lively!"

The larger of the two trunks fell to the late recruit; and when he had
set it down at the door of the designated state-room, he did
half-absently what John Gavitt might have done without blame: read the
tacked-on card, which bore the owner's name and address, written in a
firm round hand: "Charlotte Farnham, Wahaska, Minnesota."

"Thank you," said a musical voice at his elbow. "May I trouble you to
put it inside?"

Griswold wheeled as if the mild-toned request had been a blow, and was
properly ashamed. But when he saw the speaker, consternation promptly
slew all the other emotions. For the owner of the tagged trunk was the
young woman to whom, an hour or so earlier, he had given place at the
paying teller's wicket in the Bayou State Security.

She saw his confusion, charged it to the card-reading at which she had
surprised him, and smiled. Then he met her gaze fairly and became sane
again when he was assured that she did not recognize him: became sane,
and whipped off his cap, and dragged the trunk i