he was waiting. He had in his pocket a
heavy automatic pistol with which to do murder.

He had seen killing done, and the thing was fascinating; some
consciousness that the policeman had done the right thing seemed now to
justify his own intention of killing a man, or somebody.

Disappointment lingered in his mind when the lights went out on board
Nelia's boat, and for a long time he meditated as to what he should do.
He saw skiffs, motorboats, shanty-boats pulling hastily down the slough
into the Mississippi. It was the Exodus of Sin. Mendova's rectitude had
asserted its strength and power, and now the exits of the city were
flickering with the shadows of departing hordes of the night and of the
dark, all of whom had two fears: one of daylight, the other of sudden
death.

Their departure before his eyes, with darkened boats, gave Carline
an idea at last. He wanted to get away off somewhere, where he could
be alone, without any interruption. Bitter anger surged in his
breast because his wife had shamed him, left him, led him this
any-thing-but-merry chase down the Mississippi. A proud Carline had
no call to be treated thataway by any woman, especially by the
daughter of an old ne'er-do-well whom he had condescended to marry.

He had always been a hunter and outdoor man, and it was no particular
trick for him to cast off the lines of Nelia's boat and push it out
into the sluggish current, and it was as easy for him to take his own
boat and drop down into the river. He brought the two boats quietly
together and lashed them fast with rope fenders to prevent rubbing and
bumping--did it with surprising skill.

The Mississippi carried them down the reach into the crossing, and
around a bend out of sight of even the glow of the Mendova lights. Here
was one of those lonesome stretches of the winding Mississippi, with
wooded bank, sandbar, sky-high and river-deep loneliness.

Carline, with alcoholic persistency, held to his scheme. He drank the
liquor which he had salvaged in the riotous night. He thought he knew
how to bring people to time, especially women. He had seen a big
policeman set the pace, and the sound of the club breaking skull bones
was still a shock in his brain, oft repeated.

The sudden dawn caught him by surprise, and he stared rather nonplussed
by the sunrise, but when he looked around and saw that he was in
mid-stream and miles from anywhere and from any one, he knew that there
was no better place in