hat I am attached to that
country." He smiled. "Yes, I must go back. Some one is waiting for me.
You are heartily welcome to ride behind." How long would it take? A
matter of five days. Meanwhile he had told me how to reach there
independently: by stage to a place 90 miles south on the Illinois River,
then by boat to a town on the river called Bath, then cross country to
Jacksonville. I began to balance the respective disadvantages. "My name
is Reverdy Clayton," he said, extending his hand in the most cordial
way. I could not resist him. "My name is James Miles," I returned with
some diffidence. "James Miles," he echoed. "James Miles ... there was a
man of that name in Jacksonville, poor fellow ... now gone." "Perhaps he
was my father ... did you know my father?" I felt a thrill go through
me. Was this new-found acquaintance before me a friend of my father's?
It turned out to be so. But why "poor fellow"?

Clayton was not over thirty-two, therefore my father's junior by some
years. How well had they known each other? We went to dinner together.
We were served with bacon and greens, strong coffee, apple pie. It was
all very rough and strange. But Clayton told me many things. He knew the
lawyer Brooks who had written me. Brooks was a reliable man. But when I
pressed Clayton for details about my father he grew strangely reticent.
I began to feel depressed, overcome by a foreboding of wonder.

After dinner we separated. Clayton had errands to do preparatory to
leaving and I went forth to see the town. What a spectacle of undulating
board sidewalks built over swales of sand, running from hillock to
hillock! What shacks used for stores, trading offices, marts for real
estate! Truly it was a place as if built in a night, relieved but little
by buildings of a more substantial sort.... Drinking saloons were
everywhere. I heard music and entered one of these resorts. There was a
barroom in front and a dancing room in the rear. The place was filled
with sailors, steamboat captains and pilots, traders, roisterers,
clerks, hackmen, and undescribed characters. Women mingled with the men
and drank with them. They dressed with conspicuous abandon, in loud
colors. Their faces were rouged. They ran in and out of the dance room
with escorts or without, stood at the bar for drinks, entwined their
arms with those of the men. In the dance room a band was playing. A man
with a tambourine added to the hilarity of the music. It was a wild
spec