It is a lucky thing for me that I am a practiced river man."
"I do not say it could be done again. Never will there be such another
night and morning."
"Now see how it is with nature, Angelique. Life is always rising out of
death. This affair of ours,--I call it a lily growing out of the water.
Does it trouble you that your old home is out there standing almost to
its eaves in the Mississippi?"
"Papa cannot now give me so good a dower." The girl's lowered eyes
laughed into his.
"We will not have any settlements or any dower. We will be married in
this new American way. Everything I have left from this flood will be
yours and the children's, anyhow. But while there is game in the woods,
or bacon in the cellar, or flour in the bin, or wine to be tapped, or a
cup of milk left, not a child or woman or man shall go hungry. I was not
unprepared for this. My fur storehouse there on the bank of the Okaw is
empty. At the first rumor of high water I had the skins carried to the
strong-house on the hill.
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