Then they would find on the pincushion the letter she had written to her uncle, saying good-by and explaining that she had decided to remove forever the taint of her mother and herself from their house and their lives--a somewhat theatrical letter, modeled upon Ouida, whom she thought the greatest writer that had ever lived, Victor Hugo and two or three poets perhaps excepted.
Her bundle was not light, but she hardly felt it as she moved swiftly through the deserted, moonlit streets toward the river.
The wharf boat for the Cincinnati and Louisville mail steamers was anchored at the foot of Pine Street.

On the levee before it were piled the boxes, bags, cases, crates, barrels to be loaded upon the "up boat." She was descending the gentle slope toward this mass of freight when her blood tingled at a deep, hoarse, mournful whistle from far away; she knew it was the up boat, rounding the bend and sighting the town.

The sound echoed musically back and forth between the Kentucky and the Indiana bluffs, died lingeringly away.

Again the whistle boomed, again the dark forest-clad steeps sent the echoes to and fro across the broad silver river.

And now she could see the steamer, at the bend--a dark mass picked out with brilliant dots of light; the big funnels, the two thick pennants of black smoke.