had never had
before.

"I'll stand at the breech of my rifle, to defend it," she whispered to
herself. "Men are mean! I hate men!"

She found a flat book on a shelf which held a half hundred magazines.
The book was bound in blue boards, and backed with yellow leather. When
she opened it, out of curiosity, she discovered that it was full of
maps.

"Those dear boys!" she whispered, almost regretfully. "They left this
map book for me, because they knew I'd need it; knew everybody down
thisaway needs a map!"

They had done more than that; they had left the equally indispensable
"List of Post Lights," and when dusk fell and she saw a pale yellow
light revealed against a bank the little book named it "Wilkinson
Island." She pulled toward the east bank into the deadwater below
Lacours Island, cast over her anchor, and came to rest in the dark of a
starless night.

CHAPTER V

In mid-afternoon, the man who had so desperately and as a last resource
tested the efficiency of moonshine whiskey as a palliative for mental
misery awaked gradually, in confusion of mind and aching of body. Noises
filled his ears, and streaking lights blurred the keenness of his eyes.
Reason had but little to do with his first thoughts, and feelings had
nearly everything. There did not seem to be any possible atonement for
him to make. Too late, as it seemed, he realized the enormity of his
offence and the bitterness of inevitable punishment.

There remained but one thing for him to do, and that was go away down
the rivers and find the fugitive Jock Drones, whose mother feared for
him. No other usefulness of purpose remained in his reach. If he stood
up, now, before any congregation, the imps of Satan, the patrons of
moonshiners, would leer up at him in his pulpit, reminding him that he,
too, was one of them.

He went over to the corner of his cabin, raised some planks there and
dug down into the earth till he found a jug. He dragged the jug into the
cabin and out of it poured the Rasba patrimony, a hidden treasure of
gold, which he put into a leather money belt and strapped on. There was
not much in the cabin worth taking away, but he packed that little up
and made ready for his departure.

It was but a few miles over to Tug River, and he readily engaged a wagon
to carry him that far. On the wooded river bank he built a flatboat with
his own hands, and covered one end of it with a poplar-wood cabin,
purchased at a near-by sawmill. H