"Look yonda, sar! What you see yonda?"
"I see a steamboat."
"Ya—jess so. An' in dat 'teamboat dar am a angel! Sartin shoo dar am."
"I don't understand you."
"Golly, mass'r! Doan' ye see dat de boat go stop at Mass' Woodley landin'?"
"Yes; I see that."
"Wal, what she go dar for but put some'dy 'shore. She take no freight from dar, kase we hab none to gub her. We make no cotton, nor no corn to spare from de plantashun. Shoo, den, she land some passager; an' sartin shoo dat passager am de young missa come down from ole Tennessee. Tole ye so, sar. Look! de boat shove off 'gin, an' you see 't am de Cherokee, one ob dem Cumberlan' boats dat run up to Nashville."
About the boat he was right. In ten minutes after she came booming past, almost swamping our eggshell of a skiff. I read upon her side the lettering "Cherokee."
I could not help looking with interest upon that splendid craft in whose gilded saloon had lately sat the woman then occupying my thoughts. But it was an interest clouded with apprehension.