Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/219

 That was some years ago. Things are changed now, and the times are quieter," the Colonel added, with a sigh which Margaret interpreted, perhaps unjustly, as an expression of regret at the altered conditions of travel on the Mississippi.

Margaret's stateroom commanded a view of the deck; and when, late that evening, she opened her door and prepared to steal out for a last look at the river, she found herself confronted by a group of card-players. One of them might have been, judging from his dress, a clergyman. The other two were rough-looking fellows, one of whom was greatly excited. He smote the table with his clenched hand, muttering fierce imprecations. Visions of Mr. Jack Oakhurst crossed Margaret's mind; that delicate-featured young man, with the correct broad cloth suit and melancholy blue eyes, must belong to the same class as that gambler hero, and the red-faced drover and his friend were probably being "plucked." So great was the young girl's interest in the card-players that she had failed to notice three men who had come on board at the last stop; not so Philip Rondelet, whom people were wont to call unobservant. He had seen the pair of man-hunters push their manacled prisoner upon the lower deck and chain him by a ring in the gunwale to a log of wood, whereon