tell it to his old woman--she would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer.  After that the talk got further and further away, and I couldn't make out the words any more; but I could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a long ways off. I was away below the ferry now.  I rose up, and there was Jackson's Island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered and standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like a steamboat without any lights.  There warn't any signs of the bar at the head--it was all under water now. It didn't take me long to get there.  I shot past the head at a ripping rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and landed on the side towards the Illinois shore.  I run the canoe into a deep dent in the bank that I knowed about; I had to part the willow branches to get in; and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoe from the outside. I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town, three mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling.  A monstrous big lumber-raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a lantern in the middle of it.  I watched it come creeping down, and when it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, “Stern oars, there! heave her head to stabboard!”  I heard that just as plain as if the man was by my side. There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped into the woods, and laid down for a nap before breakfast. CHAPTER VIII. THE sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight o'clock.  I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied.  I could see