heard, and knew. With one stroke he
had been separated from his work, and he feared that he had lost his
precious notes for all time.

Either Carline or river pirates had carried them away. He hoped, he
believed, that he would find them, but there was an uncertainty. He
shivered apprehensively when he recalled with what frankness he had put
down details, names, acts, rumours, reports--all the countless things
which go to make up the "histories" of a voyage down from St. Louis in
skiff, shanty-boat, and launch. What would they say if they read his
notes?

He had notepaper, blank books, and ink, and he set about the weary task
of keeping up his records, and putting down all that he could recall of
the contents of his lost loose-leaf system. It was a staggering task.

In one record he wrote the habitual hour-to-hour description, comment,
talk, and fact; in his "memory journal" he put down all the things he
could recall about the contents of his lost record. He had written the
things down to save him the difficulty of trying to remember, but now he
discovered that he had remembered. A thousand times faster than he could
write the countless scenes and things he had witnessed flocked back into
the consciousness of his mind, pressing for recognition and another
chance to go down in black and white.

As he wrote, Parson Rasba, in the intervals of navigating the big
mission boat, would stand by gazing at the furious energy of his
companion. Rasba had seized upon a few great facts of life, and dwelt in
silent contemplation of them, until a young woman with a library
disturbed the echoing halls of his mind, and brought into them the
bric-a-brac of the thought of the ages. Now, from that brief experience,
he could gaze with nearer understanding at this young man who regarded
the pathway of the moon reflecting in a narrow line across a sandbar and
in a wide dancing of cold blue flames upon the waters, as an important
thing to remember; who recorded the wavering flight of the nigger geese,
or cormorants, as compared to the magnificent V-figure, straight drive
of the Canadians and the other huge water fowl; who paused to seize such
simple terms as "jump line," "dough-bait," "snag line," "reef line," as
though his life might depend on his verbal accuracy.

The Prophet pondered. The Mississippi had taught him many lessons. He
was beginning to look for the lesson in casual phenomena, and when he
said so to Terabon, the writer stared