marched. They gathered up the
remains of Palura and the men with broken skulls, and carried them out
into the street. The crowd followed, men and women both. But outside,
the hundreds scurried away in all directions, men afraid and women
choking with horror. Terabon's friend the cotton broker fled with the
rest, Carline disappeared, but Terabon went to headquarters, writing in
his pocket notebook the details of this rare and wonderful tragedy.

Policeman Laddam had single-handed charged and captured the last citadel
of Mendova vice, and the other policemen, when they looked at him, wore
expressions of wonder and bewilderment. They knew the Committee of 100
would make him their next chief and a man under whom it would be a
credit to be a cop.

Terabon, just before dawn, returned toward Mousa Slough. As he did so,
from a dull corner a whisper greeted him:

"Say, Terabon, is it straight, Palura killed up?"

"Sure thing!"

"Then Mendova's sure gone to hell!" Hilt Despard the river pirate cried.
"Say, Terabon, there's a lady down by the slough wants to get to talk to
you."

"Who----?"

"She just dropped in to-night, Nelia Crele! She's into her boat down at
the head of the sandbar, facing the switch willows. There's a little
gasolene sternwheeler next below her boat."

"She's dropped in? All right, boys, much obliged!"

They separated.

But when Terabon searched along the slough for Nelia's boat he did not
find it, and to his amazed anger he found that the gasolene boat in
which he had arrived was also gone, as well as his own skiff and all his
outfit.

"Darn this river!" he choked. "But that's a great story I sent of the
killing of Palura!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

Nelia Crele had laughed in her heart at Elijah Rasba as he sat there
listening to her reading. She knew what she was doing to the mountain
parson! She played with his feelings, touched strings of his heart that
had never been touched before, teased his eyes with a picture of
feminine grace, stirred his mind with the sense of a woman who was
bright and who knew so much that he had never known. At the same time,
there was no malice in it--just the delight in making a strong man
discover a strength beyond his own, and in humbling a masculine pride by
the sheer superiority of a woman who had neglected no opportunity to
satisfy a hunger to know.

She knew the power of a single impression and a clear, quick getaway.
She left him dazed by the fortune