He could not meet her again; he dared not. Seating himself in the office of the hotel he wrote the following note:
Dear Miss Bertha:—I wish you joy. Both of your relatives are safe. Oh, Bertha, I dare not see you again, my darling, my darling. Pardon my weakness, but if you only knew how sore my heart is you would pity me. We will probably never meet again. May your life be one of joy and happiness. You will do your duty nobly—I will, please God, try to do mine. God bless you, my darling, God bless you. May your future be as full of sunlight as the labor of my life would have made it. Again farewell—Heaven bless you.
Ben.
Having dispatched this to Bertha with the telegram he walked out into the street—again a tramp. And a tramp with a sad, sad heart.
It was the last day of September. He was two hundred miles by land and twice as many by river from New Orleans, and had but a day more and a portion of October the 2d to win his wager in. His chances looked desperate. But he was indifferent whether he won or lost. A dull, dead apathy to everything had taken possession of him. He felt that it was a luxury to be a vagabond, an outcast, a tramp, and half inclined not to go to New Orleans at all, but to start off on a roving career, and ramble, ramble, ramble, trying to get away from himself.
"Ye're a stout looking lad; can ye handle a barry? If ye can I'm taking down a gang of fifty min the night to Burk's work on the levee fifteen mile this side of Baton Rouge, and if yez wants to come along, a dollar a day and four jiggers is the pay," and the stout florid man who addressed him asked:
"Will yez go or not? Make yer answer quick, for I'm in a hurry."
"Yes, I'm in for a job, and ready," replied Ben, seizing the opportunity to leave Vicksburg.
"Very well," said the man. "Go down and get aboord the Roddy for she'll be laving in an hour. I will see ye on boord and pass yez down."
So on board the Roddy went Ben, and before she started forty more men engaged for the levee squad had joined him. In ten minutes' conversation with these he discovered that not one half of them had any intention of working on the levee. They were simply travelling. Some were, like himself, on their way to New Orleans. Others were off of the great Harvest Range, and had already stole their way thus far and were simply "putting in the winter." That is, drifting from place to place as sweet fancy directed them. They would stop at the levee camp and live off of its rations until hunted out, after which they would take up their line of tramping without an object in view or an ambition to prompt them. As they went down stream now, so the spring would see them going up, and the summer months find them scattered through the northern states. Had one of them been termed a professional tramp or "dead beat" he would have repelled the insinuation with indignation. They were after work but never caught up with it. There were some Americans in the crowd on the boat but the majority were foreigners.