humbly been grateful for even that one thing left
for him to do: find Jock Drones for his mother.

He had found Jock, and there had been no wrestling with an obdurate
spirit to send him back home, like a man, to face the law and accept the
penalty. There had been nothing to it. Jock had seen the light
instantly, and with relief. His partner had also turned back after a
decade of doubt and misery, to live a man's part "back home." The two of
them had handed him a floating Bethel, turning their gambling hell over
to him as though it were a night's lodging, or a snack, or a handful of
hickory nuts. The temple of his fathers had been no better for its
purpose than this beautiful, floating boat.

Then a woman had come floating down, a beautiful strange woman whose
voice had clutched at his heart, whose smile had deprived him of reason,
whose eyes had searched his soul. With tears on her lashes she had flung
to him that treasure-store of learning, and gone on her way, leaving him
strength and consolation.

He left his treasure and went out to look at the river. Everybody leaves
everything to look at the river! There is nothing in the world that will
prevent it. He saw, in the bright morning, that Prebol had raised his
curtain, and was looking at the river, too, though the effort must have
caused excruciating pain in his wounded shoulder. Day was growing; from
end to end of that vast, flowing sheet of water thousands upon thousands
of old river people were taking a look at the Mississippi.

Rasba carried a good broth over to Prebol for breakfast, and then
returned to his cabin, having made Prebol comfortable and put a dozen of
the wonderful books within his reach. Then the River Prophet sat down to
read his treasures, any and all of them, his lap piled up, three or four
books in one hand and trying to turn the pages of another in his other
hand by unskilful manipulation of his thumb. He was literally starving
for the contents of those books.

He was afraid that his treasure would escape from him; he kept glancing
from his printed page to the serried ranks on the crap table, and his
hands unconsciously felt around to make sure that the weight on his lap
and in his grasp was substantial and real, and not a dream or vision of
delight.

He forgot to eat; he forgot that he had not slept; he sat oblivious of
time and river, the past or the future; he grappled with pages of print,
with broadsides of pictures, with new and thri