Then he remembered.

A skiff was moored there, and he had brushed against the chain that led from the bow of the boat to the stump of a willow higher up on the bank.

The man had seen the skiff,--a rude, flat-bottomed little craft, known to the Ozark natives as a John-boat,--just before sunset that evening.

But there had been no boat in his thoughts when he had come to answer the call of the river, and in the preoccupation of his mind, as he stood there in the night beside the stream, he had not noticed it, as it lay so nearly invisible in the darkness.

Mechanically, he stooped to feel the chain with his free hand.