Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/103

 traveller, and he prepared another meal with deliberation, and ate with calm gusto, leaning in his cane-bottom stern seat against the back, resting his elbows upon the arms. Following his cup of tea he smoked a cigarette, recklessly. It was the third smoke he had taken from a box which he had purchased in Chicago, vainly endeavouring to soothe his nerves with them. Three smokes in five or six weeks!

That night he drifted into a west side eddy, and dropped a light anchor into six feet of water. He let out a long line and put up his canvas, which gave him just headroom under the hoops when he sat in the seat at the oar locks. He spread down his bed, put a gas-light lantern on the oar seat, and lay down to read one of the magazines which he had included in his outfit at Davenport.

It had been days—weeks—since he had even thought of reading Now he read with interest, having no subcurrent of ambition to keep pace with the story; he was reading for amusement, not for study, for the first time in years. He went to sleep, reading, and then, awakening, he turned out the light and settled down for the night.

The next morning but one he pulled out into the current on a dull gray day, warm but gloomy. All day long he floated down, and he wondered off and on whether he was going south too fast, whether he