"Sho!" he cried aloud, and then, again, "Sho! Sho!"

It was fairyland for him, a land of enchantment, of impossible
satisfaction and glory-be! Terabon and Nelia saw that they had given him
another pleasure, and Rasba was happy to know that he would always be
able to visit such places, and add to his own store of literature, when
he had read the books which he had, as he would do, page by page, and
word by word, his dictionary at hand.

Magazines and newspapers had little interest for him. Nelia and Terabon
could not help but wish to keep closer in touch with the world. They
picked up a copy of the _Trade-Appealer_, and then a copy of the
_Evening Battle Ax_, just out.

They read one headline:

UNKNOWN DROWNS IN CRUISER

It was a brutally frank description of a motorboat cruiser which had
floated down Hopefield Bend, awash and waterlogged, but held afloat by
air-tight tanks:

In the cabin was the body of a man, apparently about 30 years of
age, with a whiskey jug clasped in one hand by the handle. He was
face downward, and had been dead two or three days. It is supposed
he was caught in the heavy wind-storm of Wednesday night and
drowned.

The river had planned again. The river had acted again. They went to
look at the boat, which was pumped out and in Ash Slough. It was
Carline's cruiser. Then they went to the morgue, and it was Carline's
body.

Nelia broke down and cried. After all, one's husband is one's husband.
She did the right thing. She owned him, now, and she carried his remains
back home to Gage, and there she buried him, and wept on his grave.

She put on widow's weeds for him, and though she might have claimed his
property, she ignored the will which left her all of it, and gave to his
relatives and to her own poor people what was theirs. She gave Parson
Rasba, whom she had brought home with her to bury her husband, $5,000
for his services.

Then, after the estate was all settled up, she returned to Memphis, and
Terabon met her at the Union Station, dutifully, as she had told him to
do. Together they went to the City Clerk's and obtained a marriage
license, and the River Prophet, Rasba, with firm voice and unflinching
gaze, united them in wedlock.

They went aboard their own little shanty-boat, and while the rice and
old shoes of a host of river people rattled and clattered on their
cabin, they drifted out into the current and rapidly slipped away toward
Presi