"Good ev'nin', folks! Whar'n earth d' ye come from?"
We enlightened her in a few words.
"Don't mean t' say ye come all the way from Weesconsin a' down here in that thing?" pointing down at the canoe, which certainly looked quite small, at that depth, in the dim twilight.
"Certainly; why not?"
"Ye'll git drowndid, an' I'm not mistakin, afore ye git to Byron."
"Dang'rous ain't no name for 't. There was a young feller drowndid at this here bridge las' spring. The young feller he worked at the bridge-mendin', bein' a carpenter,—he called himself a carpenter, but he warn't no great fist at carpenterin', an' I know it,—and he boarded up at Byron. A 'nsurance agint kim 'long and got Rollins,—the young feller his name was Abe Rollins, an' he was a bach,—to promise to 'sure his life for a thousand dollars, which was to go t' his sister, what takes in washin', an' her man ran away from her las' year an' nobody knows where he is,—which I says is good riddance, but she takes on as though she had los' somebody worth cryin' over: there's no accountin' for tastes. The agint says to Rollins to go over to the doctor's of'c' to git 'xamined and Rollins says, 'No, I ain't agoin' to git 'xamined till I clean off; I'll go down an' take a swim at the bridge and then come back and strip for the doctor.' An' Rollins he took his swim and got sucked down inter a hole just yonder down there, by the openin' of Stillman's Creek, and he was a corpse when they hauled him out, down off Byron; an' he never hollered once but jist sunk like a stone with a cramp; an' his folks never got no 'nsurance money at all, for lackin' the doctor's c'tificate. An' it's heaps o' folks git drowndid in this river, an' nobody ever hears of 'em agin; an' I wouldn't no more step foot in that boat nor the biggest ship on the sea, an' I don't see how you can do it, ma'am!"
No doubt the good woman would have rattled on after this fashion for half the night, but we felt obliged, owing to the rapidly increasing darkness, to interrupt her with geographical inquiries. She assured us that Byron was distant some five or six miles by river, with, so far as she had heard, many shallows, whirlpools, and snags en route; while by land the village was but a mile and a quarter across the prairie, from the bridge. We accordingly made fast for the night where we had landed, placed our heaviest baggage in the tidy kitchen-sitting-room-parlor of our voluble friend, and trudged off over the fields to Byron,—a solitary light in a window and the occasional practice-note of a brass band, borne to us on the light western breeze, being our only guides.
After a deal of stumbling over a rough and ill-defined path, which we could distinguish by the sense of feeling alone, we finally reached the exceedingly quiet little village, and by dint of inquiry from house to house,—in most of which the denizens seemed preparing to retire for the night,—found the inn which had been recommended by the section-man's wife as the best in town. It was the only one. There were several commercial travelers in the place, and the hostelry was filled. But the landlord kindly surrendered to us his own well-appointed chamber, above an empty store where the village band was tuning up for Decoration Day. It seemed appropriate enough that there should be music to greet us, for we were now one hundred and thirty-four miles from Madison, and practically half through our voyage to the Mississippi.
