As we neared that picturesque spot on the Illinois side of the Ohio, known as "Cave-in Rock," we were hailed by a woman and her young daughter. The boat "rounded to" and made the landing and they came on board—a tall, thin, worn woman in tattered clothes, with a good but inexpressibly sad face, who wished to tell us that a package which we had left for her at the town on our way down had never reached her. She was a widow—Mrs. Plew—whose husband, a good river pilot, had died from overwork on a hard trip to New Orleans in the floods of the Mississippi two years before, leaving her with six children dependent upon her, the eldest a lad in his "teens," the youngest a little baby girl. They owned their home, just on the brink of the river, a little "farm" of two or three acres, two horses, thr
