Heads leaned out, also, firing jokes after the boat, and
offering the colonel large shares in the common fields and entire crops
for a seat in his conveyance.
Drift of rotten wood stuck to the house sides, and broken trees or
stumps, jammed under gallery roofs, resented the current, and broke the
surface as they rose and dipped. Strange craft, large and small, rode
down the turgid sweep. Straw beehives rolled along like gigantic pine
cones, and rustic hencoops of bottom-land settlers kept their balance as
they moved. Far off, a cart could be outlined making a hopeless ford.
The current was so broad that its sweep extended beyond the reach of
sight; and perhaps the strangest object carried by this tremendous force
was a small clapboarded house. Its back and front doors stood open, and
in the middle of the floor stood a solitary chair. One expected to see a
figure emerge from a hidden corner and sit down forlornly in the chair.
The slender voice of a violin stole across the water,--an exorcism of
the spell that had fallen on Kaskaskia.
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