“If that greeny is a friend of yours, Gus, I declare you’d better tell him not to tie to the serious-looking young fellow in the white hat and gold specs, unless he means to part with all his loose change before bed-time.”

That is what the mud-clerk drawled to August the striker, but the striker seemed to hear the words as something spoken afar off.  For just then he was seeing a vision of a drunken mob, and a rope, and a pleading woman, and a brave old man threatened with death.  Just then he heard harsh and muddled voices, rude oaths, and jeering laughter, and above it all the sweet pleading of a little girl begging for a father’s life.  And the quick blood came into his fair German face, and he felt that he could not save this Norman Anderson from the toils of the gambler, though he might, if provoked, pitch him over the guard of the boat.  For was not Andrew’s letter, which described the mob, in his pocket, and burning a hole in his pocket as it had been ever since he received it?

But then this was Julia’s brother, and there was nothing he would not do for Julia.  So, sometime after the mud-clerk had ceased to speak, the striker gave utterance to both impulses by replying, “He’s no friend of mine,” a little crisply, and then softly adding, “Though I shouldn’t like to see him fleeced.”

By this time a new actor had appeared on the scene in the person of a man with a black mustache and side-whiskers, who took a seat behind a card-table near the bar.

“H’llo!” said the mud-clerk in a low and lazy voice, “Parkins is back again.  After his scrape at Paducah last February, he disappeared, and he’s been shady ever since.  He’s growed whiskers since, so’s not to be recognized.  But he’ll be skeerce enough when we get to Paducah.  Now, see how quick he’ll catch the greenies, won’t you?” The prospect was so charming as almost to stimulate the mud-clerk to speak with some animation.

But August Wehle, the striker on the Iatan, had an uncomfortable feeling that he had seen that face before, and that the long mustache and side-whiskers had grown in a remarkably short space of time.  Could it be that there were two men who could spread a smile over the lower half of their faces in that automatic way, while the spider-eyes had no sort of sympathy with it?  Surely, this man with black whiskers and mustache was not just like the singing-master at Sugar-Grove school-house, who had “red-top hay on to his upper lip,” and yet—­and yet—­

“Gentlemen,” said Parkins—­his Dickensian name would be Smirkins—­“I want to play a little game just for the fun of the thing.  It is a trick with three cards.  I put down three cards, face up.  Here is six of diamonds, eight of spades, and the ace of hearts.  Now, I will turn them over so quickly that I will defy any of you to tell which is the ace.  Do you see?  Now, I would like to bet the wine for the company that no gentleman here can turn up the ace.  All I want is a little sport.  Something