"I 'low you know," Mrs. Mahna shook her head, sympathetically. "You can call the forks of the Ohio the jumping off-place—lots does. After passing the forks nothing matters—much."
In this way Delia became one of the river people. Who she was, where she was from, where she had lived, were problems for the old ladies to gossip about. But these matters of the past were not all there was to talk about Delia. She had her own present place on the river.
She remained in Putney Bend only over night. In mid-morning she dropped out of the eddy and floating up with the current pulled out into the Old Mississip' which carried her down stream in an autumn sunshine on a breathless day.
Mrs. Mahna watched her till the boat was out of sight down the crossing and over the sandbar. She voiced the river thought:
"I sure hate to see a girl like that dropping down; seems like there's something mean, when you think of what she's going to meet up with down there—folks that won't care, and men that are bad, careless, and no 'count!"
The girl's boat was hardly out of sight when a gasolene cruiser which had moored above Putney Bend landing along the switch-willow bars backed out into the river and straightened away down stream. That
