xtremities of depravity
and heartlessness.

She saw men stooped and slinking, whose glance was sidelong and whose
expression was venomous, casting covert looks toward her as they passed
by into the gray mist of falling night. They entered a narrow waterway
among the sandbars, and left behind the feeling that along that waterway
was the abiding place of lost souls. She wanted to take up the anchor
and flee out onto the river, but when she looked into the darkening
breadths, she felt the menace of the miles, of the mists, of the wooded
shores. Foreboding was in her tired soul.

She examined her pistol, to make sure that it was ready to use; she
locked the stern door, and drew the curtains; she went to the bow and
looked carefully at the anchor-line fastenings. With no light on board
to blind her gaze, she scrutinized all the surroundings, to make sure of
her locality. In that blank gloom she was dubious but brave. Not a thing
visible, not a sound audible, nothing but her remote and little
understood sensation of premonitory dread explained her perturbation.
She entered the cabin, locked the door, set the window catches and
sticks, lighted the lamp, and sat down to--think. Her bookshelves were
empty, and she was glad that she had emptied them in a good cause. It
occurred to her that she ought to make up another list for her own
service, and with pencil and paper she began that most fascinating
work, the compilation of one's own library. As she made her selections,
she forgot the menace which she had observed.

In the stillness she thought her own ears were ringing and paid no
attention to the humming that increased in volume moment by moment. It
was a flash of lightning without thunder that stirred her senses. She
looked up from her absorption.

She heard a distant rumble, a near-by stirring. The wavelets along the
side of the boat were noisy; they rattled like paper. Something fell
clattering on the roof of the cabin, and a tearing, ripping, crashing
struck the boat and fairly tossed it skipping along the surface of the
water. The lamp blew out as a window pane broke, and the woman was
thrown to the floor in a confusion of chairs, table, and other loose
objects. Happily, the stove was screwed fast to the floor. The anchor
line broke with a loud twang, and the black confusion was lighted with
flares and flashes of gray-blue glaring.

The river had made Nelia Crele believe that she was in jeopardy from
man; but it was