The stranger regarded him with his peculiar smile.  Then, replacing the pouch in his belt, he shook Morse’s hand again and mounted the horse.

“So your name’s Martin Morse!  Well—­goodby, Morsey!”

Morse hesitated.  A blush rose to his dark check.  “You didn’t tell me your name,” he said.  “In case—­”

“In case I’m wanted?  Well, you can call me Captain Jack.”  He smiled, and, nodding his head, put spurs to his mustang and cantered away.

Morse did not do much work that day, falling into abstracted moods and living over his experiences of the previous night, until he fancied he could almost see his strange guest again.  The narrow strip of meadow was haunted by him.  There was the tree under which he had first placed him, and that was where he had seen him sitting up in his dripping but well-fitting clothes.  In the rough garments he had worn and returned lingered a new scent of some delicate soap, overpowering the strong alkali flavor of his own.  He was early by the river side, having a vague hope, he knew not why, that he should again see him and recognize him among the passengers.  He was wading out among the reeds, in the faint light of the rising moon, recalling the exact spot where he had first seen the stranger, when he was suddenly startled by the rolling over in the water of some black object that had caught against the bank, but had been dislodged by his movements.  To his horror it bore a faint resemblance to his first vision of the preceding night.  But a second glance at the helplessly floating hair and bloated outline showed him that it was a dead man, and of a type and build far different from his former companion.  There was a bruise upon his matted forehead and an enormous wound in his throat already washed bloodless, white, and waxen.  An inexplicable fear came upon him, not at the sight of the corpse, for he had been in Indian massacres and had rescued bodies mutilated beyond recognition; but from some moral dread that, strangely enough, quickened and deepened with the far-off pant of the advancing steamboat.  Scarcely knowing why, he dragged the body hurriedly ashore, concealing it in the reeds, as if he were disposing of the evidence of his own crime.  Then, to his preposterous terror, he noticed that the panting of the steamboat and the beat of its paddles were “slowing” as the vague bulk came in sight, until a huge wave from the suddenly arrested wheels sent a surge like an enormous heartbeat pulsating through the sedge that half submerged him.  The flashing of three or four lanterns on deck and the motionless line of lights abreast of him dazzled his eyes, but he knew that the low fringe of willows hid his house and wagon completely from view.  A vague murmur of voices from the deck was suddenly overridden by a sharp order, and to his relief the slowly revolving wheels again sent a pulsation through the water, and the great fabric moved solemnly away.  A sense of relief came over him, he knew not why, and he was conscious that for the first time he had not cared to look at the boat.