"I thought you went down with Mrs. Gilmore," he replied, "to rehearse your part in the play."
"Commodore's down on the lower deck," she said; "freight deck--with mom-a--and the bishop."
"Yes, mom-a made him go." She laughed. "Some of the sick folks down there are Protestants and were threatening to turn Catholic. Is anybody sick aboard the _Westwood_?"
Hugh made no reply but to meet her steady gaze with his own till she asked in a subdued voice: "Cholera?"
Hugh nodded. Each knew the other was aware of the song that floated up after them from the boat behind.
"What did the bridegroom want?" asked the girl.
"Wanted to give us a thousand dollars to take his bride--with him or without him--aboard the _Votaress_."
"But when he heard how much worse off we are--" prompted she. "Yes."
"Anyhow, this boat hasn't got that boat's trouble!"
"No," said Hugh, and knew they were both thinking of his father. Together they stood hearkening to the last of the _Westwood's_ song:
"'Ef you git dah befo' I do-- _O, high-low!_-- Jest tell 'em I'm a-comin' too-- _John's gone to high-low!_'"
They did not tie to the wharf-boat at Natchez. At that stage of water there was good landing a few yards below, where the sandy bank was not too wet to walk across to a higher one which floods never reached, close under the bluff. Here had left the boat half a dozen passengers including the judge and his sister. So good-by to that lady. Never would _she_ have set foot on the _Votaress_ had she dreamed she was to be "dumped off" on such a spot. She believed that girl of Gideon Hayle's had laughed as she went up the perilous stage plank. And really there is no proof to the contrary.
Another incident awoke in Ramsey no mirth. Yet she never forgot it. It occurred on the upper, greener level that overlooked, across the river, a great sweep of Louisiana lowlands at that moment bathed in a golden sunset. The same light fell upon the incident itself--the Marburg lad's burial; fell upon the bent mother standing behind the priest and between her elder son and Madame Hayle, surrounded by her fellow exiles, many of whom, with faces hidden like hers, wept more for her bereavement than they had earlier done for their own. So the rude pine coffin descended into the unhallowed ground. From the hurricane-deck Ramsey looked down with wet eyes to the meek mourner returning aboard on the arm of her Otto. Thinking how easily in the play of chance the lost brother might have been saved and her saved brother lost, and recalling the plight of the _Westwood_, she suddenly realized that no one could tell who might go next--"to high-low." Otto Marburg, glancing up, saw her tears, and would have paused but for the sacred burden on his arm.