ap more after he's tripped the riveh once or twice,
than he ever believed in all his borned days, eh, Buck?"

"It's so!" Buck cried out. "Last night I was thinking that I'd wasted my
life down here; years and years I've been a shanty-boater, drifter,
fisherman, trapper, market hunter, and late years, I've gambled. I've
been getting in bad, worse all the while. The Prophet here, coming
along, seemed to wake me up--the man I used to be--I mean. It wasn't so
much what you said, Parson, but your being here. Then I've been thinking
all over again. I've an idea, boys, that when I go back up to-morrow I
won't be so sorry for what I've been, as glad that I didn't grow worse
than I did. It won't be easy, boys--going back. I'm taking the old river
with me, though. I've framed its bends and islands, its chutes and
reaches, like pictures in my mind. Old Parson here, too, coming in on us
the way he did, saying that this was hell, but he'd come here to live in
it. That's what waked me up, Parson! I could see how you felt. You'd
never seen such a place before, but you said in your heart and your eyes
showed it, Parson, that you would leave God's country to help us poor
devils. It's just a point of view, though. I'm going right up to my
particular hell, and I'll look back here to this thousand miles of river
as heaven. Yes, sir! But my job is up there--in that hell!"

So they talked, and always their thoughts were on the river channel, and
their minds groping into the future.

When the _Kate_ whistled way down at Bell's Landing, Rasba took the two
across to Caruthersville and bade them good-bye at the landing.

The _Kate_ pulled out and Parson Rasba crossed to the three houseboats,
two of them his own. He went in to see Prebol, who was lonesome and
wanted to talk a little.

"What you going to do, Parson?" Prebol asked.

"I'd kind-a like to get to see shanty-boaters, and talk to them," the
man answered. "I wonder couldn't yo' sort of he'p me; tell me where I
mout begin and where it'd he'p the most, an' hurt people's feelin's the
least? I'd jes' kind-a like to be useful. Course, I got to get you
cured up an' took cyar of first."

"I cayn't say much about being pious on Old Mississip'," Prebol grinned,
"but theh's two ways of findin' trouble. One's to set still long enough,
and then, again, you can go lookin' fo' hit. Course, yo' know me! I've
hunted trouble pretty fresh, an' I've found hit, an' I've lived onto
hit. I cayn't he'p m