buckeyes; a four-foot diamond-back rattlesnake's skin, beautiful and uncanny, the bunch of five rattles tied to the tail. Close beside the glittering skin hung even an odder treasure-trove: a small white kid glove, quaintly embroidered in faded pink-and-blue forget-me-nots.

"Great-Aunt Emily had some embroidered gloves like that in her trousseau," thought Marian. "I do wonder——"

"Ye're lookin' at me keepsakes?" The pilot sighted up-stream, then turned, beaming. "Maybe it will pass the time like for me to tell ye of them. There is not one but stands for an adventure. That wampum was given to me by Chief Ogalalla; a famous Sioux warrior, he was. 'Twas back in sixty-wan, and the string was the worth of two ponies in thim days. Three of me mates an' meself was prospectin' down in western Nebraska. There came a great blizzard, and Chief Ogalalla and three of his men rode up to our camp, and we took them in for the night."

"And he gave you the wampum in payment?"

"Payment? Never! A man never paid for food nor shelter on the plains. No more than for the air he breathed. 'Twas gratitude. For Chief Ogalalla had a ragin' toothache, and I cured it for him. Made him a poultice of red pepper."

"Mercy! I should think that would hurt worse than any toothache!"

"Maybe it did, ma'am. But at least it disthracted his attention from the tooth itself. That rattlesnake, I kilt in a swamp near Vicksburg. Me and me wife was young then, and we'd borrowed a skiff, an' rowed out to hunt pond-lilies. Mary would go in the bog, walkin' on the big tufts of rushes. Her little feet were that light she didn't sink at all. But the first thing I heard she gave a little squeal, an' there she stood, perched on a tuft, and not three feet away, curled up on a log, was that great shinin' serpent. Just rockin' himself easy, he was, makin' ready to strike. An' strike he would. Only"—the small twinkling face grew grim—"only I struck first."

Marian shivered.

"And the little white glove?"

The old pilot beamed.

"Sure, I hoped ye'd notice that, miss. That glove points to the proud day f'r me! It was the summer of '60. I was pilotin' the Annie Kilburn, a grand large packet, down to Saint Louis. We had a wonderful party aboard her. 'Twas just the beginnin' of war times, an' 'twould be like readin' a history book aloud to tell ye their names. Did ever ye hear of the Little Giant?"

"Of Stephen A. Douglas, the famous orator? Why, yes, to be sure. Was he aboard?"

"Yes. A fine, pleasant-spoke gentleman he was, too. But 'tis not the Little Giant that this story is about. 'Twas his wife. Ye've heard of her, sure? Ah, but I wish you could have seen her when she came trippin' up the steps of me pilot-house and passed the time of day with me, so sweet and friendly. Afterward they told me what a great lady she was. Though I could see that for meself, she was that gentle, and her voice so quiet and low, and her look so sweet and kind. I was showin' her about, an' feelin' terrible proud, an' fussy, an' excited. I was a young felly then, and it took no more than her word an' her smile to turn me foolish head. An' I was showin' her how to handle the wheel, and by some mischance, didn't I catch me blunderin' hand in the frame, an' give it a wrench that near broke every bone! I couldn't leave the wheel till the first mate should come to take me place. And Madame Douglas was that distressed, you'd think it was her own hand that she was grievin' over. She would tear her lace handkerchief into strips, and bind up the cut, and then what does she do but take her white glove, an' twist it round the fingers, so's to keep them from the air, till I could find time to bandage them. I said not a word. But the minute her silks an' laces went trailin' down the hurricane ladder, I jerked off that glove an' folded it in my wallet. An' there it stayed till I could have that frame made for it. And in that frame I've carried it ever since, all these long years.

"Those were the grand days, sure," he added, wistfully. "Before the war, we pilots were the lords of the river. I had me a pair of varnished boots, an' tight striped trousers, an' a grand shiny stove-pipe hat, an' I wouldn't have called the king me uncle. It's sad times for the river, nowadays." He looked away up the broad, tumbling yellow stream. "Look at her, will ye! No river at all, she is, wid her roily yellow water, an' her poor miry banks, an' her bluffs, all washed away to shiftin' sand. But wasn't she the grand stream entirely, before the war!"

Marian looked at the framed river-chart above the wheel. She tried to read its puzzle of tangled lines. The old man sniffed.

"Don't waste yer time wid that gimcrack, miss. Steer by it? Never!" He shrugged his shoulders loftily. "It hangs there by government request, so I tolerate it to please the Department. I know this river by heart, every inch. I could steer this boat from Natchez to Saint Paul wid me eyes shut, the blackest night that ever blew!"

Marian dimpled at his majestic tone.

"Will you show me how to steer? I've always been curious as to how it is done."

"Certain I will."

Keenly interested, Marian gripped the handholds, and turned the heavy wheel back and forth as he directed. Suddenly her grasp loosened. Down the stream, straight toward the boat, drifted a rolling black mass.

"Mercy, what is that? It looks like a whole forest of logs. It's rolling right toward us!"

"Ye're right. 'Tis a raft that's broke adrift. But we have time to dodge, be sure. Watch now."

His right hand grasped the wheel. His left seized the bell-cord. Three sharp toots signalled the engine-room for full head of steam. Instantly the Lucy jarred under Marian's feet with the sudden heavy force of doubled power. Slowly the steam-boat swung out of her course, in a long westward curve. Past her, the nearest logs not fifty feet away, the great, grinding mass of tree-trunks rolled and tumbled by, sweeping on toward the Gulf.

"'Tis handy that we met those gintlemen by daylight," remarked the pilot, cheerfully. "For one log alone would foul our paddle-wheels and give us a bad shaking up. And should all that Donnybrook Fair come stormin' into us by night, we'd go to the bottom before ye could say Jack Robinson."

Marian's eyes narrowed. She stared at the dusk stormy yellow river, the blank inhospitable shores. She was not by any means a coward. But she could not resist asking one question.

"Do we go on up-river after nightfall? Or do we stop at some landing?"

"There's no landing between here and Grafton, at the mouth of the Illinois River. We'll have to tie up along shore, I'm thinkin'." The old man spoke grudgingly. "If I was runnin' her meself, 'tis little we'd stop for the night. But the captain thinks different. He's young and notional. Tie up over night we must, says he. But 'tis all nonsense. Chicken-hearted, I'd call it, that's all."

Marian laughed to herself. Inwardly she was grateful for the captain's chicken-heartedness.

A loud gong sounded from below. The pilot nodded.

"Yon's your supper-bell, miss. I thank ye kindly for the pleasure of yer company. I shall be honored if ye choose to come again. And soon."

Marian made her way down to the cabin through the stormy dusk. The little room was warm and brightly lighted; the captain's negro boy was just placing huge smoking-hot platters of perfectly cooked fish and steak upon the clean oil-cloth table. They gathered around it, an odd company. Marian and Roderick, the captain, the Lucy's engineer, a pleasant, boyish fellow, painfully embarrassed and redolent of hot