Do you belong----?"
He stepped quickly from the "stage." The curtains drew apart. The scene
revealed was a drawing-room. In it stood alone, as if playfully
listening for something, the housemaid; not "Harriet" but Ramsey.
(Laughter and applause.)
XLVI
AFTER THE PLAY
Neither Hugh nor Ramsey slept a moment that night. And no more did the
Gilmores or "Harriet" or John the Baptist or even the senator or the
Californian. The play, second act, was cut without mercy and rushed to a
close to let its hero and heroine off at Napoleon, which Ned called a
"future city" but which, some years later, became a former city, by
melting into thin air, or thick water, and leaving not so much behind as
a candle-end or a broken bottle.
It was not far above there that these unsleeping passengers began to
remark a fresh rise in the river's flood, which her "family" and crew
had noticed much earlier by a difference in the nature and quantity of
its driftwood. Near the mouth of White River, about an hour's run above
Napoleon, a great floating tree stump, with all its roots, was caught on
the buckets of the "labboard" wheel--"like a cur on a cow's horn," said
Gilmore--and carried clear over it with a sudden hubbub in the
paddle-box, tenfold what ten curs could have made, bringing to his feet
every passenger not abed, and scaring awake every sleeping one.
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