arly an hour he was conscious of the assistance of the river in
carrying him along at an even pace, permitting him to remain as guardian
of the woman. He felt that she needed him, that he must help her, and
there grew in his heart an emotion which strangely made him desire to
sing and to shout.

He watched the cabin-boat drift down right into the pathway of
reflections that fell from the lights on Hickman bluffs. His eyes were
apparently fixed upon the boat, and he could not lose sight of it. The
river carried him right into the same glare, and for a few minutes he
looked up at the arcs, and shaded his eyes to get some view of the town
whose sounds consisted of the mournful howling of a dog.

Rasba looked back at the town, and felt the awe which a sleeping
village inspires in the thoughts of a passer-by. He thought perhaps he
would never again see that town. He wondered if there was a lost soul
there whose slumberings he could disturb and bring it to salvation. He
looked down the river, and the next instant his boat was seized as by a
strong hand and whirled around and around, and flung far from its
course. He remembered the phenomenon at the Forks of the Ohio, and again
at Columbus bluff's. With difficulty he found his bearings.

He looked around and saw to his surprise that he was drifting up stream.
He looked about him in amazement. He searched the blackness of the
river, and stared at the blinding lights of the town. He began to row
with his sweeps, and look down stream whither had disappeared the
cabin-boat whose occupant he had felt called upon to guard and protect.

That boat was gone. In the few minutes it had disappeared from his view.
He surmised, at last, that he had been thrust into an eddy, for the
current was carrying him up stream, and he rowed against it in vain.
Only when he had floated hundreds of yards in the leisurely reverse
current below the great bar of Island No. 6 and had drifted out into the
main current again, almost under the Hickman lights once more, was he
able in his ignorance to escape from the time-trap into which he had
fallen.

Standing at his oars, and rowing down stream, he tried to overtake the
young woman whose good looks, bright eyes, sympathetic understanding,
and need of his spiritual tutoring had caught his mind and made it
captive.

Dawn, following false dawn, saw him passing New Madrid, still rowing
impatiently, his eyes staring down the wild current, past a graveyard