h coarse soap. The stranger
put them on while his companion busied himself in collecting a pile of
sticks and dry leaves.

"What's that for?" said the stranger, suddenly.

"A fire to dry your clothes."

The stranger calmly kicked the pile aside.

"Not any fire tonight if I know it," he said, brusquely. Before Morse
could resent his quickly changing moods he continued, in another tone,
dropping to an easy reclining position beneath the tree, "Now, tell me
all about yourself, and what you are doing here."

Thus commanded, Morse patiently repeated his story from the time he
had left his backwoods cabin to his selection of the river bank for a
"location." He pointed out the rich quality of this alluvial bottom
and its adaptability for the raising of stock, which he hoped soon
to acquire. The stranger smiled grimly, raised himself to a sitting
position, and, taking a penknife from his damp clothes, began to clean
his nails in the bright moonlight--an occupation which made the simple
Morse wander vaguely in his narration.

"And you don't know that this hole will give you chills and fever till
you'll shake yourself out of your boots?"

Morse had lived before in aguish districts, and had no fear.

"And you never heard that some night the whole river will rise up and
walk over you and your cabin and your stock?"

"No. For I reckon to move my shanty farther back."

The man shut up his penknife with a click and rose.

"If you've got to get up at sunrise, we'd better be turning in. I
suppose you can give me a pair of blankets?"

Morse pointed to the wagon. "Thar's a shakedown in the wagon bed; you
kin lie there." Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the inconsequence
and abruptness of a shy man, continued the previous conversation.

"I shouldn't like to move far away, for them steamboats is pow'ful
kempany o' nights. I never seed one afore I kem here," and then, with
the inconsistency of a reserved man, and without a word of further
preliminary, he launched into a confidential disclosure of his late
experiences. The stranger listened with a singular interest and a
quietly searching eye.

"Then you were watching the boat very closely just now when you saw me.
What else did you see? Anything before that--before you saw me in the
water?"

"No--the boat had got well off before I saw you at all."

"Ah," said the stranger. "Well, I'm going to turn in." He walked to the
wagon, mounted it, and by the time that Morse had