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 THE INDIAN DRUM
 
 As Constance started away, Spearman suddenly drew her back 
 to him and kissed her. FRONTISPIECE.
 
 THE 
 INDIAN DRUM 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MAcHARG 
 
 AND 
 
 EDWIN BALMER 
 
 FRONTISPIECE BY 
 
 W. T. BENDA 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 Copyright, 1917, 
 BY EDWIN BALMER 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 M 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTKB PAGE 
 
 I THE MAX WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED . 1 
 
 II WHO Is ALAN CONRAD? . . . .19 
 
 III DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW ... 34 
 
 IV "ARRIVED SAFE; WELL" . . .57 
 
 V AN ENCOUNTER ..... 69 
 
 VI ' CONSTANCE SHERRILL .... 93 
 
 VII THE DEED IN TRUST . . . .112 
 
 VIII MR. CORVET'S PARTNER . . . .126 
 
 IX VIOLENCE . . . . . .145 
 
 X A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE . . .162 
 
 XI A CALLER ...... 179 
 
 XII THE LAND OF THE DRUM . . .199 
 
 XIII THE THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS . 210 
 
 XIV THE OWNER OF THE WATCH . . . 229 
 XV OLD BURR OF THE FERRY . . . 254 
 
 XVI A GHOST SHIP . .266 
 
 XVII " HE KILLED YOUR FATHER " . . . 288 
 
 XVIII MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH . . .298 
 
 XIX THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH . .318 
 
 XX THE SOUNDING OF THE DRUM . . . 335 
 
 XXI THE FATE OF THE MIWAKA . . S47 
 
 1239222
 
 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 
 THE MAN WHOM THE STOEM HAUNTED 
 
 NEAR the northern end of Lake Michigan, where 
 the bluff -bowed ore-carriers and the big, low- 
 lying, wheat-laden steel freighters from Lake 
 Superior push out from the Straits of Mackinac and 
 dispute the right of way, in the island divided channel, 
 with the white-and-gold, electric lighted, wireless 
 equipped passenger steamers bound for Detroit and 
 Buffalo, there is a copse of pine and hemlock back 
 from the shingly beach. From this copse dark, 
 blue, primeval, silent at most times as when the Great 
 Manitou ruled his inland waters there comes at time 
 of storm a sound like the booming of an old Indian 
 drum. This drum beat, so the tradition says, when- 
 ever the lake took a life ; and, as a sign perhaps that it 
 is still the Manitou who rules the waters in spite of all 
 the commerce of the cities, the drum still beats its roll 
 for every ship lost on the lake, one beat for every life. 
 So men say they heard and counted the beat- 
 ings of the drum to thirty-five upon the hour when, 
 as afterward they learned, the great steel steamer 
 Wenota sank with twenty-four of its crew and eleven 
 passengers ; so men say they heard the requiem
 
 4 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 was this frost on the panes of the Fort Dearborn Club 
 
 one of the staidest of the down-town clubs for men 
 
 that the great log fires blazing on the open hearths 
 added appreciable light as well as warmth to the rooms. 
 
 The few members present at this hour of the after- 
 noon showed by their lazy attitudes and the desultori- 
 ness of their conversation the dulling of vitality which 
 warmth and shelter bring on a day of cold and storm. 
 On one, however, the storm had had a contrary effect. 
 With swift, uneven steps he paced now one room, now 
 another; from time to time he stopped abruptly by a 
 window, scraped from it with finger nail the frost, 
 stared out for an instant through the little opening he 
 had made, then resumed as abruptly his nervous pacing 
 with a manner so uneasy and distraught that, since his 
 arrival at the club an hour before, none even among 
 those who knew him best had ventured to speak to him. 
 
 There are, in every great city, a few individuals who 
 from their fullness of experience in an epoch of the 
 city's life come to epitomize that epoch in the general 
 mind; when one thinks of a city or of a section of the 
 country in more personal terms than its square miles, 
 its towering buildings, and its censused millions, one 
 must think of those individuals. Almost every great 
 industry owns one and seldom more than one; that 
 often enough is not, in a money sense, the predominant 
 figure of his industry ; others of his rivals or even of 
 his partners may be actually more powerful than he ; 
 but he is the personality ; he represents to the outsiders 
 the romance and mystery of the secrets and early, 
 naked adventures of the great achievement. Thus, to 
 think of the great mercantile establishments of State 
 Street is to think immediately of one man; another
 
 MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED 5 
 
 very vivid and picturesque personality stands for the 
 stockyards ; another rises from the wheat pit ; one 
 more from the banks ; one from the steel works. The 
 man who was pacing restlessly and alone the rooms 
 of the Fort Dearborn Club on this stormy afternoon 
 was the man who, to most people, bodied forth the life 
 underlying all other commerce thereabouts but t.he 
 least known, the life of the lakes. 
 
 The lakes, which mark unmistakably those who get 
 their living from them, had put their marks on him. 
 Though he was slight in frame with a spare, almost 
 ascetic leanness, he had the wiry strength and endur- 
 ance of the man whose youth had been passed upon 
 the water. He was very close to sixty now, but his 
 thick, straight hair was still jet black except for a 
 slash of pure white above one temple; his brows were 
 black above his deep blue eyes. Unforgettable eyes, they 
 were; they gazed at one directly with surprising, dis- 
 concerting intrusion into one's thoughts ; then, before 
 amazement altered to resentment, one realized that, 
 though he was still gazing, his eyes were vacant with 
 speculation a strange, lonely withdrawal into him- 
 self. His acquaintances, in explaining him to stran- 
 gers, said he had lived too much by himself of late ; he 
 and one man servant shared the great house which had 
 been unchanged and in which nothing appeared to 
 have been worn out or have needed replacing since 
 his wife left him, suddenly and unaccountably, about 
 twenty years before. At that time he had looked 
 much the same as now ; since then, the white slash upon 
 his temple had grown a bit broader perhaps ; his nose 
 had become a trifle aquiline, his chin more sensitive, 
 his well formed hands a little more slender. People
 
 6 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 said he looked more French, referring to his father 
 who was known to have been a skin-hunter north of 
 Lake Superior in the 50's but who later married an 
 English girl at Mackinac and settled down to become 
 a trader in the woods of the North Peninsula, where 
 Benjamin Corvet was born. 
 
 Duriag his boyhood, men came to the peninsula to 
 cut timber ; young Corvet worked with them and began 
 building ships. Thirty-five years ago, he had been 
 only one of the hundreds with his fortune in the fate 
 of a single bottom; but to-day in Cleveland, in Du- 
 luth, in Chicago, more than a score of great steamers 
 under the names of various interdependent companies 
 were owned or controlled by him and his two partners, 
 Sherrill and young Spearman. 
 
 He was a quiet, gentle-mannered man. At times, 
 however, he suffered from fits of intense irritability, 
 and these of late had increased in frequency and vio- 
 lence. It had been noticed that these outbursts oc- 
 curred generally at times of storm upon the lake, but 
 the mere threat of financial loss through the destruc- 
 tion of one or even more of his ships was not now 
 enough to cause them; it was believed that they were 
 the result of some obscure physical reaction to the 
 storm, and that this had grown upon him as he grew 
 older. 
 
 To-day his irritability was so marked, his uneasi- 
 ness so much greater than any one had seen it before, 
 that the attendant whom Corvet had sent, a half hour 
 earlier, to reserve his usual table for him in the grill 
 " the table by the second window " had started 
 away without daring to ask whether the table was to 
 be set for one or more. Corvet himself had corrected
 
 MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED 7 
 
 the omission : " For two," he had shot after the man. 
 Now, as his uneven footsteps carried him to the door 
 of the grill, and he went in, the steward, who had 
 started forward at sight of him, suddenly stopped, and 
 the waiter assigned to his table stood nervously un- 
 certain, not knowing whether to give his customary 
 greeting or to efface himself as much as possible. 
 
 The tables, at this hour, were all unoccupied. Cor- 
 vet crossed to the one he had reserved and sat down ; 
 he turned immediately to the window at his side and 
 scraped on it a little clear opening through which he 
 could see the storm outside. Ten minutes later he 
 looked up sharply but did not rise, as the man he had 
 been awaiting Spearman, the younger of his two 
 partners came in. 
 
 Spearman's first words, audible through the big 
 room, made plain that he was late to an appointment 
 asked by Corvet; his acknowledgment of this took the 
 form of an apology, but one which, in tone different 
 from Spearman's usual bluff, hearty manner, seemed 
 almost contemptuous. He seated himself, his big, 
 powerful hands clasped on the table, his gray eyes 
 studying Corvet closely. As Corvet, without acknowl- 
 ing the apology, took the pad and began to write an 
 order for both, Spearman interfered; he had already 
 lunched ; he would take only a cigar. The waiter took 
 the order and went away. 
 
 When he returned, the two men were obviously in 
 bitter quarrel. Corvet's tone, low pitched but vio- 
 lent, sounded steadily in the room, though his words 
 were inaudible. The waiter, as he set the food upon 
 the table, felt relief that Corvet's outburst had fallen 
 on other shoulders than his.
 
 8 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 It had fallen, in fact, upon the shoulders best able 
 to bear it. Spearman still called, though he was 
 slightly over forty now, " young " Spearman was 
 the power in the great ship-owning company of Cor- 
 vet, Sherrill, and Spearman. Corvet had withdrawn, 
 during recent years, almost entirely from active life; 
 some said the sorrow and mortification of his wife's 
 leaving him had made him choose more and more the 
 seclusion of his library in the big lonely house on the 
 North Shore, and had given Spearman the chance to 
 rise; but those most intimately acquainted with the 
 affairs of the great ship-owning firm maintained that 
 Spearman's rise had not been granted him but had 
 been forced by Spearman himself. In any case, Spear- 
 man was not the one to accept Corvet's irritation 
 meekly. 
 
 For nearly an hour, the quarrel continued with in- 
 termitted truces of silence. The waiter, listening, as 
 waiters always do, caught at times single sentences. 
 
 " You have had that idea for some time? " he heard 
 from Corvet. 
 
 " We have had an understanding for more than a 
 month." 
 
 "How definite?" 
 
 Spearman's answer was not audible, but it more 
 intensely agitated Corvet; his lips set; a hand which 
 held his fork clasped and unclasped nervously; he 
 dropped his fork and, after that, made no pretense of 
 eating. 
 
 The waiter, following this, caught only single words. 
 "Sherrill" that, of course, was the other partner. 
 " Constance " that was Sherrill's daughter. The 
 other names he heard were names of ships. But, as
 
 MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED & 
 
 the quarrel went on, the manners of the two men 
 changed; Spearman, who at first had been assailed by 
 Corvet, now was assailing him. Corvet sat back in 
 his seat, while Spearman pulled at his cigar and now 
 and then took it from his lips and gestured with it 
 between his fingers, as he jerked some ejaculation 
 across the table. 
 
 Corvet leaned over to the frosted window, as he had 
 done when alone, and looked out. Spearman shot a 
 comment which made Corvet wince and draw back from 
 the window ; then Spearman rose. He delayed, stand- 
 ing, to light another cigar deliberately and with stud- 
 ied slowness. Corvet looked up at him once and asked 
 a question, to which Spearman replied with a snap of 
 the burnt match down on the table ; he turned abruptly 
 and strode from the room. Corvet sat motionless. 
 
 The revulsion to self-control, sometimes even to apol- 
 ogy, which ordinarily followed Corvet's bursts of irri- 
 tation had not come to him ; his agitation plainly had 
 increased. He pushed from him his uneaten luncheon 
 and got up slowly. He went out to the coat room, 
 where the attendant handed him his coat and hat. He 
 hung the coat upon his arm. The doorman, ac- 
 quainted with him for many years, ventured to suggest 
 a cab. Corvet, staring strangely at him, shook his 
 head. 
 
 " At least, sir," the man urged, " put on your coat." 
 
 Corvet ignored him. 
 
 He winced as he stepped out into the smarting, 
 blinding swirl of sleet, but his shrinking was not phys- 
 ical ; it was mental, the unconscious reaction to some 
 thought the storm called up. The hour was barely 
 four o'clock, but so dark was it with the storm that the
 
 10 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 shop windows were lit; motorcars, slipping and skid- 
 ding up the broad boulevard, with headlights burning; 
 kept their signals clattering constantly to warn other 
 drivers blinded by the snow. The sleet-swept side- 
 walks were almost deserted; here or there, before a 
 hotel or one of the shops, a limousine came to the curb, 
 and the passengers dashed swiftly across the walk to 
 shelter. 
 
 Corvet, still carrying his coat upon his arm, turned 
 northward along Michigan Avenue, facing into the 
 gale. The sleet beat upon his face and lodged in the 
 folds of his clothing without his heeding it. 
 
 Suddenly he aroused. " One two three 
 four ! " he counted the long, booming blasts of a steam 
 whistle. A steamer out on that snow-shrouded lake 
 was in distress. The sound ceased, and the gale bore 
 in only the ordinary storm and fog signals. Corvet 
 recognized the foghorn at the lighthouse at the end of 
 the government pier; the light, he knew, was turning 
 white, red, white, red, white behind the curtain of sleet ; 
 other steam vessels, not in distress, blew their blasts ; 
 the long four of the steamer calling for help cut in 
 again. 
 
 Corvet stopped, drew up his shoulders, and stood 
 staring out toward the lake, as the signal blasts of dis- 
 tress boomed and boomed again. Color came now into 
 his pale cheeks for an instant. A siren swelled and 
 shrieked, died away wailing, shrieked louder and 
 stopped; the four blasts blew again, and the siren 
 wailed in answer. 
 
 A door opened behind Corvet; warm air rushed out, 
 laden with sweet, heavy odors chocolate and candy ; 
 girls' laughter, exaggerated exclamations, laughter
 
 MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED 11' 
 
 again came with it; and two girls holding their muffs 
 before their faces passed by. 
 
 " See you to-night, dear." 
 
 " Yes ; I'll be there if he comes." 
 
 "Oh, he'll come!" 
 
 They ran to different limousines, scurried in, and the 
 cars swept off. 
 
 Corvet turned about to the tearoom from which they 
 had come; he could see, as the door opened again, a 
 dozen tables with their white cloths, shining silver, and 
 steaming little porcelain pots ; twenty or thirty girls 
 and young women were refreshing themselves, pleas- 
 antly, after shopping or fittings or a concert ; a few 
 young men were sipping chocolate with them. The blast 
 of the distress signal, the scream of the siren, must have 
 come to them when the door was opened; but, if they 
 heard it at all, they gave it no attention; the clatter 
 and laughter and sipping of chocolate and tea was in- 
 terrupted only by those who reached quickly for a 
 shopping list or some filmy possession threatened by 
 the draft. They were as oblivious to the lake in front 
 of their windows, to the ship struggling for life in the 
 storm, as though the snow were a screen which shut 
 them into a distant world. 
 
 To Corvet, a lake man for forty years, there was 
 nothing strange in this. Twenty miles, from north to 
 south, the city its business blocks, its hotels and res- 
 taurants, its homes faced the water and, except 
 where the piers formed the harbor, all unprotected 
 water, an open sea where in times of storm ships sank 
 and grounded, men fought for their lives against the 
 elements and, losing, drowned and died; and Corvet 
 was well aware that likely enough none of those in that
 
 12 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 tearoom or in that whole building knew what four long 
 blasts meant when they were blown as they were now, 
 or what the siren meant that answered. But now, as 
 he listened to the blasts which seemed to have grown 
 more desperate, this profoundly affected Corvet. He 
 moved once to stop one of the couples coming from the 
 tearoom. They hesitated, as he stared at them; then, 
 when they had passed him, they glanced back. Corvet 
 shook himself together and went on. 
 
 He continued to go north. He had not seemed, in 
 the beginning, to have made conscious choice of this 
 direction ; but now he was following it purposely. He 
 stopped once at a shop which sold men's things to make 
 a telephone call. He asked for Miss Sherrill when the 
 number answered; but he did not wish to speak to 
 her, he said; he wanted merely to be sure she would be 
 there if he stopped in to see her in half an hour. 
 Then north again. He crossed the bridge. Now, 
 fifteen minutes later, he came in sight of the lake once 
 more. 
 
 .Great houses, the Sherrill house among them, here 
 face the Drive, the bridle path, the strip of park, and 
 the wide stone esplanade which edges the lake. Corvet 
 crossed to this esplanade. It was an ice-bank now ; 
 hummocks of snow and ice higher than a man's head 
 shut off view of the floes tossing and crashing as far 
 out as the blizzard let one see; but, dislodged and 
 shaken by the buffeting of the floe, they let the gray 
 water swell up from underneath and wash around his 
 feet as he went on. He did not stop at the Sherrill 
 house or look toward it, but went on fully a quarter 
 of a mile beyond it; then he came back, and with an 
 oddly strained and queer expression and attitude, he
 
 MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED 13 
 
 stood staring out into the lake. He could not hear 
 the distress signals now. 
 
 Suddenly he turned. Constance Sherrill, seeing him 
 from a window of her home, had caught a cape about 
 her and run out to him. 
 
 " Uncle Benny ! " she hailed him with the affectionate 
 name she had used with her father's partner since she 
 was a baby. "Uncle Benny, aren't you coming in?" 
 
 "Yes," he said vaguely. "Yes, of course." He 
 made no move but remained staring at her. " Con- 
 nie ! " he exclaimed suddenly, with strange reproach to 
 himself in his tone. " Connie ! Dear little Connie ! " 
 
 " Why? " she asked him. " Uncle Benny, what's the 
 matter? " 
 
 He seemed to catch himself together. " There was 
 a ship out there in trouble," he said in a quite different 
 tone. " They aren't blowing any more ; are they all 
 right?" 
 
 " It was one of the M and D boats the Louisiana, 
 they told me. She went by here blowing for help, and 
 I called up the office to find out. A tug and one other 
 of their line got out to her ; she had started a cylinder 
 head bucking the ice and was taking in a little water. 
 Uncle Benny, you must put on your coat." 
 
 She brushed the sleet from his shoulders and collar, 
 and held the coat for him ; he put it on obediently. 
 
 " Has Spearman been here to-day ? " he asked, not 
 looking at her. 
 
 "To see father?" 
 
 " No ; to see you." 
 
 " No." 
 
 He seized her wrist. " Don't see him, when he 
 comes ! " he commanded.
 
 14 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 "Uncle Benny!" 
 
 "Don't see him!" Corvet repeated. "He's asked 
 you to marry him, hasn't he? " 
 
 Connie could hot refuse the answer. " Yes." 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 " Why why, Uncle Benny, I haven't answered him 
 yet." 
 
 " Then don't don't; do you understand, Connie? " 
 
 She hesitated, frightened for him. "I'll I'll tell 
 you before I see him, if you want me to, Uncle Benny," 
 she granted. 
 
 " But if you shouldn't be able to tell me then, Con- 
 nie ; if you shouldn't want to then ? " The humility 
 of his look perplexed her ; if he had been any other man 
 any man except Uncle Benny she would have 
 thought some shameful and terrifying threat hung over 
 him; but he broke off sharply. " I must go home," he 
 said uncertainly. " I must go home ; then I'll come 
 back. Connie, you won't give him an answer till I 
 come back, wfll you? " 
 
 "No." He got her promise, half frightened, half 
 bewildered; then he turned at once and went swiftly 
 away from her. 
 
 She ran back to the door of her father's house. 
 From there she saw him reach the corner and turn west 
 to go to Astor Street. He was walking rapidly and 
 did not hesitate. 
 
 The trite truism which relates the inability of human 
 beings to know the future, has a counterpart not so 
 often mentioned: We do not always know our own 
 past until the future has made plain what has hap- 
 pened to us. Constance Sherrill, at the close of this, 
 the most important day in her life, did not know at all
 
 MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED 15 
 
 that it had been important to her. All she felt was a 
 perplexed, but indefinite uneasiness about Uncle Benny. 
 How strangely he had acted! Her uneasiness in- 
 creased when the afternoon and evening passed without 
 his coming back to see her as he had promised, but she 
 reflected he had not set any definite time when she was 
 to expect him. During the night her anxiety grew still 
 greater ; and in the morning she called his house up on 
 the telephone, but the call was unanswered. An hour 
 later, she called again ; still getting no result, she called 
 her father at his office, and told him of her anxiety 
 about Uncle Benny, but without repeating what Uncle 
 Benny had said to her or the promise she had made to 
 him. Her father made light of her fears; Uncle 
 Benny, he reminded her, often acted queerly in bad 
 weather. Only partly reassured, she called Uncle 
 Benny's house several more times during the morning, 
 but still got no reply; and after luncheon she called 
 her father again, to tell him that she had resolved to 
 get some one to go over to the house with her. 
 
 Her father, to her surprise, forbade this rather 
 sharply; his voice, she realized, was agitated and ex- 
 cited, and she asked him the reason; but instead of 
 answering her, he made her repeat to him her conver- 
 sation of the afternoon before with Uncle Benny, and 
 now he questioned her closely about it. But when she, 
 in her turn, tried to question him, he merely put her off 
 and told her not to worry. Later, when she called him 
 again, resolved to make him tell her what was the mat- 
 ter, he had left the office. 
 
 In the late afternoon, as dusk was drawing into 
 dark, she stood at the window, watching the storm, 
 which still continued, with one of those delusive hopes
 
 16 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 which come during anxiety that, because it was the 
 time of day at which she had seen Uncle Benny walking 
 by the lake the day before, she might see him there 
 again, when she saw her father's motor approaching. 
 It was coming from the north, not from the south as 
 it would have been if he was coming from his office or 
 his club, and it had turned into the drive from the west. 
 She knew, therefore, that he was coming from Uncle 
 Benny's house, and, as the car swerved and wheeled in, 
 she ran out into the hall to meet him. 
 
 He came in without taking off hat or coat ; she could 
 see that he was perturbed, greatly agitated. 
 
 "What is it, father?" she demanded. "What has 
 happened? " 
 
 " I do not know, my dear." 
 
 " It is something something that has happened to 
 Uncle Benny?" 
 
 "I * am afraid so, dear yes. But I do not 
 know what it is that has happened, or I would tell 
 you." 
 
 He put his arm about her and drew her into a room 
 opening off the hall his study. He made her repeat 
 again to him the conversation she had had with Uncle 
 Benny and tell him how he had acted ; but she saw that 
 what she told him did not help him. He seemed to 
 consider it carefully, but in the end to discard or dis- 
 regard it. 
 
 Then he drew her toward him. 
 
 " Tell me, little daughter. You have been a great 
 deal with Uncle Benny and have talked with him; I 
 want you to think carefully. Did you ever hear him 
 speak of any one called Alan Conrad? " 
 
 She thought. " No, father."
 
 MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED 17 
 
 " No reference ever made by him at all to either 
 name Alan or Conrad? " 
 
 " No, father." 
 
 " No reference either to any one living in Kansas, or 
 to a town there called Blue Rapids? " 
 
 " No, father. Who is Alan Conrad? " 
 
 " I do not know, dear. I never heard the name until 
 to-day, and Henry Spearman had never heard it. But 
 it appears to be intimately connected in some way with 
 what was troubling Uncle Benny yesterday. He wrote 
 a letter yesterday to Alan Conrad in Blue Rapids and 
 mailed it himself; and afterward he tried to get it 
 back, but it already had been taken up and was on its 
 way. I have not been able to learn anything more 
 about the letter than that. He seems to have been 
 excited and troubled all day ; he talked queerly to you, 
 and he quarreled with Henry, but apparently not about 
 anything of importance. And to-day that name, Alan 
 Conrad, came to me hi quite another way, in a way 
 which makes it certain that it is closely connected with 
 whatever has happened to Uncle Benny. You are 
 quite sure you never heard him mention it, dear? " 
 
 " Quite sure, father." 
 
 He released her and, still in his hat and coat, went 
 swiftly up the stairs. She ran after him and found him 
 standing before a highboy in his dressing room. He 
 unlocked a drawer in the highboy, and from within the 
 drawer he took a key. Then, still disregarding her, he 
 hurried back down-stairs. 
 
 As she followed him, she caught up a wrap and pulled 
 it around her. He had told the motor, she realized now, 
 to wait ; but as he reached the door, he turned and 
 stopped her.
 
 18 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " I would rather you did not come with me, little 
 daughter. I do not know at all what it is that has hap- 
 pened I will let you know as soon as I find out." 
 
 The finality in his tone stopped her from argument. 
 As the house door and then the door of the limousine 
 closed after him, she went back toward the window, 
 slowly taking off the wrap. She saw the motor shoot 
 swiftly out upon the drive, turn northward in the way 
 that it had come, and then turn again, and disappear. 
 She could only stand and watch for it to come back and 
 listen for the 'phone; for the moment she found it 
 difficult to think. Something had happened to Uncle 
 Benny, something terrible, dreadful for those who loved 
 him; that was plain, though only the fact and not its 
 nature was known to her or to her father; and that 
 something was connected intimately connected, her 
 father had said with a name which no one who knew 
 Uncle Benny, ever had heard before, with the name of 
 Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids, Kansas. Who was this 
 Alan Conrad, and what could his connection be with 
 Uncle Benny so to precipitate disaster upon him?
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 WHO IS ALAN CONKAD? 
 
 THE recipient of the letter which Benjamin Corvet 
 had written and later so excitedly attempted to 
 recover, was asking himself a question which was 
 almost the same as the question which Constance Sher- 
 rill had asked. He was, the second morning later, 
 waiting for the first of the two daily eastbound trains 
 which stopped at the little Kansas town of Blue Rapids 
 which he called home. As long as he could look back 
 into his life, the question, who is this person they call 
 Alan Conrad, and what am I to the man who writes 
 from Chicago, had been the paramount enigma of ex- 
 istence for him. Since he was now twenty-three, as 
 nearly as he had been able to approximate it, and as 
 distinct recollection of isolated, extraordinary events 
 went back to the time when he was five, it was quite 
 eighteen years since he had first noticed the question 
 put to the people who had him in charge : " So this is 
 little Alan Conrad. Who is he? " 
 
 Undoubtedly the question had been asked in his pres- 
 ence before; certainly it was asked many times after- 
 wards; but it was since that day when, on his noticing 
 the absence of a birthday of his own, they had told 
 him he was five, that he connected the evasion of the 
 answer with the difference between himself and the 
 other children he saw, and particularly between him-
 
 20 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 self and the boy and girl in the same house with him. 
 When visitors came from somewhere far off, no one of 
 them ever looked surprised at seeing the other children 
 or asked about them. Always, when some one came, it 
 was, " So this is little Jim ! " and " This is Betty ; she's 
 more of a Welton every day ! " Then, each time with 
 that change in the voice and in the look of the eyes 
 and in the feel of the arms about him for though 
 Alan could not feel how the arms hugged Jim and 
 Betty, he knew that for him it was quite differ- 
 ent " So this is Alan Conrad," or, " So this is the 
 child!" or, "This, I suppose, is the boy I've heard 
 about!" 
 
 However, there was a quite definite, if puzzling, ad- 
 vantage at times in being Alan Conrad. Following the 
 arrival of certain letters, which were distinguished 
 from most others arriving at the house by having no 
 ink writing on the envelope but just a sort of purple 
 or black printing like newspapers, Alan invariably re- 
 ceived a dollar to spend just as he liked. To be sure, 
 unless "papa" took him to town, there was nothing 
 for him to spend it upon ; so, likely enough, it went into 
 the square iron bank, of which the key was lost; but 
 quite often he did spend it according to plans agreed 
 upon among all his friends and, in memory of these 
 occasions and in anticipation of the next, " Alan's dol- 
 lar " became a community institution among the chil- 
 dren. 
 
 But exhilarating and wonderful as it was to be able 
 of one's self to take three friends to the circus, or to be 
 the purveyor of twenty whole packages not sticks 
 of gum, yet the dollar really made only more plain the 
 boy's difference. The regularity and certainty of its
 
 WHO IS ALAN CONRAD? 21 
 
 arrival as Alan's share of some larger sum of money 
 which came to " papa " in the letter, never served to 
 make the event ordinary or accepted. 
 
 " Who gives it to you, Alan ? " was a question more 
 often asked, as time Vent on. The only answer Alan 
 could give was, " It comes from Chicago." The post- 
 mark on the envelope, Alan noticed, was always Chi- 
 cago ; that was all he ever could find out about his 
 dollar. He was about ten years old when, for a reason 
 as inexplicable as the dollar's coming, the letters with 
 the typewritten addresses and the enclosed money 
 ceased. 
 
 Except for the loss of the dollar at the end of every 
 second month a loss much discussed by all the chil- 
 dren and not accepted as permanent till more than two 
 years had passed Alan felt no immediate results from 
 the cessation of the letters from Chicago ; and when the 
 first effects appeared, Jim and Betty felt them quite 
 as much as he. Papa and mamma felt them, too, when 
 the farm had to be given up, and the family moved to 
 the town, and papa went to work in the woolen mill 
 beside the river. 
 
 Papa and mamma, at first surprised and dismayed by 
 the stopping of the letters, still clung to the hope of 
 the familiar, typewritten addressed envelope appearing 
 again ; but when, after two years, no more money came, 
 resentment which had been steadily growing against the 
 person who had sent the money began to turn against 
 Alan ; and his " parents " told him all they knew about 
 him. 
 
 In 1896 they had noticed an advertisement for per- 
 sons to care for a child; they had answered it to the 
 office of the newspaper which printed it. In response
 
 22 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 to their letter a man called upon them and, after seeing 
 them and going around to see their friends, had made 
 arrangements with them to take a boy of three, who was 
 in good health and came of good people. He paid in 
 advance board for a year and agreed to send a certain 
 amount every two months after that time. The man 
 brought the boy, whom he called Alan Conrad, and left 
 him. For seven years the money agreed upon came ; 
 now it had ceased, and papa had no way of finding the 
 man the name given by him appeared to be fictitious, 
 and he had left no address except "general delivery, 
 Chicago " Papa knew nothing more than that. He 
 had advertised in the Chicago papers after the money 
 stopped coming, and he had communicated with every 
 one named Conrad in or near Chicago, but he had 
 learned nothing. Thus, at the age of thirteen, Alan 
 definitely knew that what he already had guessed the 
 fact that he belonged somewhere else than in the little 
 brown house was all that any one there could tell him ; 
 and the knowledge gave persistence to many internal 
 questionings. Where did he belong? Who was he? 
 Who was the man who had brought him here? Had 
 the money ceased coming because the person who sent 
 it was dead? In that case, connection of Alan with the 
 place where he belonged was permanently broken. Or 
 would some other communication from that source reach 
 him some time if not money, then something else? 
 Would he be sent for some day? He did not resent 
 " papa and mamma's " new attitude of benefactors 
 toward him ; instead, loving them both because he had 
 no one else to love, he sympathized with it. They had 
 struggled hard to keep the farm. They had ambitions 
 for Jim ; they were scrimping and sparing now so that
 
 WHO IS ALAN CONRAD? 2z> 
 
 Jim could go to college, and whatever was given to Alan 
 was taken away from Jim and diminished by just that 
 much liis opportunity. 
 
 But when Alan asked papa to get him a job in the 
 woolen mill at the other side of town where papa him- 
 self worked in some humble and indefinite capacity, the 
 request was refused. Thus, externally at least, Alan's 
 learning the little that was known about himself made 
 no change in his way of living; he went, as did Jim, to 
 the town school, which combined grammar and high 
 schools under one roof ; and, as he grew older, he clerked 
 as Jim also did in one of the town stores during 
 vacations and in the evenings ; the only difference was 
 this : that Jim's money, so earned, was his own, but 
 Alan carried his home as part payment of those arrears 
 which had mounted up against him since the letters 
 ceased coming. At seventeen, having finished high 
 school, he was clerking officially in Merrill's general 
 store, when the next letter came. 
 
 It was addressed this time not to papa, but to Alan 
 Conrad. He seized it, tore it open, and a bank draft 
 for fifteen hundred dollars fell out. There was no letter 
 with the enclosure, no word of communication; just the 
 draft to the order of Alan Conrad. Alan wrote the 
 Chicago bank by which the draft had been issued ; their 
 reply showed that the draft had been purchased with 
 currency, so there was no record of the identity of the 
 person who had sent it. More than that amount was 
 due for arrears for the seven years during which no 
 money was sent, even when the total which Alan had 
 earned was deducted. So Alan merely endorsed the 
 draft over to " father " ; and that fall Jim went to col- 
 lege. But, when Jim discovered that it not only was
 
 24 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 possible but planned at the university for a boy to 
 work his way through, Alan went also. 
 
 Four wonderful years followed. The family of a 
 professor of physics, with whom he was brought in 
 contact by his work outside of college, liked him and 
 " took him up." He lodged finally in their house and 
 became one of them. In companionship with these edu- 
 cated people, ideas and manners came to him which he 
 could not have acquired at home ; athletics straightened 
 and added bearing to his muscular, well-formed body ; 
 his pleasant, strong young face acquired self-reliance 
 and self-control. Life became filled with possibilities 
 for himself which it had never held before. 
 
 But on his day of graduation he had to put away the 
 enterprises he had planned and the dreams he dreamed 
 and, conscious that his debt to father and mother still 
 remained unpaid, he had returned to care for them ; 
 for father's health had failed and Jim who had 
 opened a law office in Kansas City, could do nothing to 
 help. 
 
 No more money had followed the draft from Chicago 
 and there had been no communication of any kind ; but 
 the receipt of so considerable a sum had revived and 
 intensified all Alan's speculations about himself. The 
 vague expectation of his childhood that sometime, in 
 some way, he would be " sent for " had grown during 
 the last six years to a definite belief. And now on 
 the afternoon before the summons had come. 
 
 This time, as he tore open the envelope, he saw that 
 besides a check, there was writing within an uneven 
 and nervous-looking but plainly legible communication 
 in longhand. The letter made no explanation. It told 
 him, rather than asked him, to come to Chicago, gave
 
 WHO IS ALAN CONRAD? 25 
 
 minute instructions for the journey, and advised him 
 to telegraph when he started. The check was for a 
 hundred dollars to pay his expenses. Check and letter 
 were signed by a name completely strange to him. 
 
 He was a distinctly attractive looking lad, as he 
 stood now on the station platform of the little town, 
 while the eastbound train rumbled in, and he fingered in 
 his pocket the letter from Chicago. 
 
 As the train came to a stop, he pushed his suitcase up 
 on to a car platform and stood on the bottom step, look- 
 ing back at the little town standing away from its rail- 
 road station among brown, treeless hills, now scantily 
 snow-covered the town which was the only home he 
 ever consciously had known. His eyes dampened and 
 he choked, as he looked at it and at the people on the 
 station platform the station-master, the drayman, 
 the man from the post office who would receive the mail 
 bag, people who called him by his first name, as he called 
 them by theirs. He did not doubt at all that he would 
 see the town and them again. The question was what 
 he would be when he did see them. They and it would 
 not be changed, but he would. As the train started, 
 he picked up the suitcase and carried it into the second 
 day-coach. 
 
 Finding a seat, at once he took the letter from his 
 pocket and for the dozenth time reread it. Was Corvet 
 a relative? Was he the man who had sent the remit- 
 tances when Alan was a little boy, and the one who later 
 had sent the fifteen hundred dollars? Or was he merely 
 a go-between, perhaps a lawyer? There was no letter- 
 head to give aid in these speculations. The address to 
 which Alan was to come was in Astor Street. He had 
 never heard the name of the street before. Was it a
 
 26 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 business street, Corvet's address in some great office 
 building, perhaps? 
 
 He tried by repeating both names over and over to 
 himself to arouse any obscure, obliterated childhood 
 memory he might have had of then ; but the repetition 
 brought no result. Memory, when he stretched it back 
 to its furthest, showed him only the Kansas prairie. 
 
 Late that afternoon he reached Kansas City, desig- 
 nated in the letter as the point where he would change 
 cars. That night saw him in his train a transconti- 
 nental with berths nearly all made up and people sleep- 
 ing behind the curtains. Alan undressed and got into 
 his berth, but he lay awake most of the night, excited 
 and expectant. The late February dawn showed him 
 the rolling lands of Iowa which changed, while he was at 
 breakfast in the dining car, to the snow-covered fields 
 and farms of northern Illinois. Toward noon, he could 
 see, as the train rounded curves, that the horizon to the 
 east had taken on a murky look. Vast, vague, the 
 shadow the emanation of hundreds of thousands of 
 chimneys thickened and grew more definite as the 
 train sped on ; suburban villages began supplanting 
 country towns ; stations became more pretentious. 
 They passed factories ; then hundreds of acres of little 
 houses of the factory workers in long rows ; swiftly the 
 buildings became larger, closer together ; he had a vision 
 of miles upon miles of streets, and the train rolled slowly 
 into a long trainshed and stopped. 
 
 Alan, following the porter with his suitcase from the 
 car, stepped down among the crowds hurrying to and 
 from the trains. He was not confused, he was only 
 intensely excited. Acting in implicit accord with the 
 instructions of the letter, which he knew by heart, he
 
 WHO IS ALAN CONRAD? 27 
 
 went to the uniformed attendant and engaged a taxicab 
 itself no small experience ; there would be no one at 
 the station to meet him, the letter had said. He gave 
 the Astor Street address and got into the cab. Lean- 
 ing forward in his seat, looking to the right and then 
 to the left as he was driven through the city, his first 
 sensation was only disappointment. 
 
 Except that it was larger, with more and bigger 
 buildings and with more people upon its streets, Chicago 
 apparently did not differ from Kansas City. If it was, 
 in reality, the city of his birth, or if ever he had seen 
 these streets before, they now aroused no memories in 
 him. 
 
 It had begun to snow again. For a few blocks the 
 taxicab drove north past more or less ordinary build- 
 ings, then turned east on a broad boulevard where tall 
 tile and brick and stone structures towered till their 
 roofs were hidden in the snowfall. The large, light 
 flakes, falling lazily, were thick enough so that, when 
 the taxicab swung to the north again, there seemed to 
 Alan only a great vague void to his right. For the 
 hundred yards which he could view clearly, the space 
 appeared to be a park; now a huge granite building, 
 guarded by stone lions, went by ; then more park ; but 
 beyond A strange stir and tingle, quite distinct 
 from the excitement of the arrival at the station, 
 pricked in Alan's veins, and hastily he dropped the 
 window to his right and gazed out again. The lake, as 
 he had known since his geography days, lay to the east 
 of Chicago; therefore that void out there beyond the 
 park was the lake or, at least, the harbor. A different 
 air seemed to come from it ; sounds . . . Suddenly it 
 all was shut off ; the taxicab, swerving a little, was dash-
 
 28 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 ing between business blocks; a row of buildings had 
 risen again upon the right ; they broke abruptly to show 
 him a wooden-walled chasm in which flowed a river full 
 of ice with a tug dropping its smokestack as it went 
 below the bridge which the cab crossed; buildings on 
 both sides again ; then, to the right, a roaring, heaving, 
 crashing expanse. 
 
 The sound, Alan knew, had been coming to him as an 
 undertone for many minutes ; now it overwhelmed, swal- 
 lowed all other sound. It was great, not loud ; all sound 
 which Alan had heard before, except the soughing of 
 the wind over his prairies, came from one point; even 
 the monstrous city murmur was centered in comparison 
 with this. Alan could see only a few hundred yards out 
 over the water as the taxicab ran along the lake drive, 
 but what was before him was the surf of a sea ; that con- 
 stant, never diminishing, never increasing roar came 
 from far beyond the shore ; the surge and rise and fall 
 and surge again were of a sea in motion. Floes floated, 
 tossed up, tumbled, broke, and rose again with the rush 
 of the surf; spray flew up between the floes; geysers 
 spurted high into the air as the pressure of the water, 
 bearing up against the ice, burst between two great ice- 
 cakes before the waves cracked them and tumbled them 
 over. And all was without wind ; over the lake, as over 
 the land, the soft snowflakes lazily floated down, 
 scarcely stirred by the slightest breeze; that roar was 
 the voice of the water, that awful power its own. 
 
 Alan choked and gasped for breath, his pulses pound- 
 ing in his throat ; he had snatched off his hat and, lean- 
 ing out of the window sucked the lake air into his lungs. 
 There had been nothing to make him expect this over- 
 whelming crush of feeling. The lake he had thought
 
 WHO IS ALAN CONRAD? 29 
 
 of it, of course, as a great body of water, an interest- 
 ing sight for a prairie boy to see; that was all. No 
 physical experience in all his memory had affected him 
 like this ; and it was without warning ; the strange thing 
 that had stirred within him as the car brought him to 
 the drive down-town was strengthened now a thousand- 
 fold ; it amazed, half frightened, half dizzied him. Now, 
 as the motor suddenly swung around a corner and shut 
 the sight of the lake from him, Alan sat back breath- 
 less. 
 
 " Astor Street," he read the marker on the corner a 
 block back from the lake, and he bent quickly forward 
 to look, as the car swung to the right into Astor Street. 
 It was as in this neighborhood it must be a resi- 
 dence street of handsome mansions built close together. 
 The car swerved to the east curb about the middle of 
 the block and came to a stop. The house before which 
 it had halted was a large stone house of quiet, good 
 design; it was some generation older, apparently, than 
 the houses on each side of it which were brick and terra 
 cotta of recent, fashionable architecture; Alan only 
 glanced at them long enough to get that impression be- 
 fore he opened the cab door and got out; but as the 
 cab drove away, he stood beside his suitcase looking up 
 at the old house which bore the number given in Benja- 
 min Corvet's letter, then around at the other houses and 
 back to that again. 
 
 The neighborhood obviously precluded the probabil- 
 ity of Corvet's being merely a lawyer a go-between. 
 He must be some relative; the question ever present in 
 Alan's thought since the receipt of the letter, but held 
 in abeyance, as to the possibility and nearness of Cor- 
 vet's relation to him, took sharper and more exact form
 
 10 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 low than he had dared to let it take before. Was his 
 elationship to Corvet, perhaps, the closest of all rela- 
 ionships? Was Corvet his . . . father? He checked 
 he question within himself, for the time had passed for 
 nere speculation upon it now. Alan was trembling 
 xcitedly ; for whoever Corvet might be the enigma 
 >f Alan's existence was going to be answered when he 
 ad entered that house. He was going to know who he 
 ras. All the possibilities, the responsibilities, the at- 
 achments, the opportunities, perhaps, of that person 
 ehom he was but whom, as yet, he did not know 
 vere before him. 
 
 He half expected the heavy, glassless door at the top 
 >f the stone steps to be opened by some one coming out 
 o greet him, as he took up his suitcase; but the gray 
 louse, like the brighter mansions on both sides of it, 
 emained impassive. If any one in that house had 
 >bserved his coming, no sign was given. He went up 
 he steps and, with fingers excitedly unsteady, he 
 >ushed the bell beside the door. 
 
 The door opened almost instantly so quickly after 
 he ring, indeed, that Alan, with leaping throb of his 
 leart, knew that some one must have been awaiting him. 
 3ut the door opened only halfway, and the man who 
 itood within, gazing out at Alan questioningly, was ob- 
 viously a servant. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked, as Alan stood looking at 
 lini and past him to the narrow section of darkened hall 
 diich was in sight. 
 
 Alan put his hand over the letter in his pocket. 
 ' I've come to see Mr. Corvet," he said " Mr. Benja- 
 nin Corvet." 
 
 " What is your name? "
 
 WHO IS ALAN CONRAD? 31 
 
 Alan gave his name ; the man repeated it after him, in 
 the manner of a trained servant, quite without inflec- 
 tion. Alan, not familiar with such tones, waited un- 
 certainly. So far as he could tell, the name was en- 
 tirely strange to the servant, awaking neither welcome 
 nor opposition, but indifference. The man stepped 
 back, but not in such a manner as to invite Alan in ; on 
 the contrary, he half closed the door as he stepped back, 
 leaving it open only an inch or two ; but it was enough 
 so that Alan heard him say to some one within : 
 
 " He says he's him." 
 
 " Ask him in ; I will speak to him." It was a girl's 
 voice this second one, a voice such as Alan never had 
 heard before. It was low and soft but quite clear and 
 distinct, with youthful, impulsive modulations and the 
 manner of accent which Alan knew must go with the 
 sort of people who lived in houses like those on this 
 street. 
 
 The servant, obeying the voice, returned and opened 
 wide the door. 
 
 " Will you come in, sir? " 
 
 Alan put down his suitcase on the stone porch ; the 
 man made no move to pick it up and bring it in. Then 
 Alan stepped into the hall face to face with the girl who 
 had come from the big room on the right. 
 
 She was quite a young girl not over twenty-one or 
 twenty-two, Alan judged; like girls brought up in 
 wealthy families, she seemed to Alan to have gained 
 young womanhood in far greater degree in some respects 
 than the girls he knew, while, at the same time, in other 
 ways, she retained more than they some characteristics 
 of a child. Her slender figure had a woman's assurance 
 and grace; her soft brown hair was dressed like a
 
 32 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 woman's ; her gray eyes had the open directness of the 
 girl. Her face smoothly oval, with straight brows 
 and a skin so delicate that at the temples the veins 
 showed dimly blue was at once womanly and youth- 
 ful; and there was something altogether likable and 
 simple about her, as she studied Alan now. She had on 
 a street dress and hat ; whether it was this, or whether 
 it was the contrast of her youth and vitality with this 
 somber, darkened house that told him, Alan could not 
 tell, but he felt instinctively that this house was not 
 her home. More likely, it was some indefinable, yet con- 
 vincing expression of her manner that gave him that 
 impression. While he hazarded, with fast beating 
 heart, what privilege of acquaintance with her Alan 
 Conrad might have, she moved a little nearer to him. 
 She was slightly pale, he noticed now, and there were 
 lines of strain and trouble about her eyes. 
 
 " I am Constance Sherrill," she announced. Her 
 tone implied quite evidently that she expected him to 
 have some knowledge of her, and she seemed surprised 
 to see that her name did not mean more to him. 
 
 " Mr. Corvet is not here this morning," she said. 
 
 He hesitated, but persisted : " I was to see him here 
 to-day, Miss Sherrill. He wrote me, and I telegraphed 
 him I would be here to-day." 
 
 " I know," she answered. " We had your telegram. 
 Mr. Corvet was not here when it came, so my father 
 opened it." Her voice broke oddly, and he studied her 
 in indecision, wondering who that father might be that 
 opened Mr. Corvet's telegrams. 
 
 "Mr. Corvet went away very suddenly," she ex- 
 plained. She seemed, he thought, to be trying to make 
 something plain to him which might be a shock to him ;
 
 WHO IS ALAN CONRAD? 33 
 
 yet herself to be uncertain what the nature of that 
 shock might be. Her look was scrutinizing, question- 
 ing, anxious, but not unfriendly. " After he had writ- 
 ten you and something else had happened I think 
 to alarm my father about him, father came here to his 
 house to look after him. He thought something might 
 have . . . happened to Mr. Corvet here in his house- 
 But Mr. Corvet was not here." 
 
 " You mean he has disappeared ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he has disappeared." 
 
 Alan gazed at her dizzily. Benjamin Corvet 
 whoever he might be had disappeared ; he had gone. 
 Did any one else, then, know about Alan Conrad ? 
 
 " No one has seen Mr. Corvet," she said, " since the 
 day he wrote to you. We know that that he became 
 so disturbed after doing that writing to you that 
 we thought you must bring with you information of 
 him." 
 
 " Information ! " 
 
 " So we have been waiting for you to come here and 
 tell us what you know about him or or your connec- 
 tion with him."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 
 
 ALAN, as he looked confusedly and blankly at her, 
 made no attempt to answer the question she had 
 asked, or to explain. For the moment, as he 
 fought to realize what she had said and its meaning for 
 himself, all his thought was lost in mere dismay, in the 
 denial and checking of what he had been feeling as he 
 entered the house. His silence and confusion, he knew, 
 must seem to Constance Sherrill unwillingness to an- 
 swer her; for she did not suspect that he was unable 
 to answer her. She plainly took it in that way; but 
 she did not seem offended ; it was sympathy, rather, that 
 she showed. She seemed to appreciate, without under- 
 standing except through her feelings, that for some 
 reason answer was difficult and dismaying for him. 
 
 " You would rather explain to father than to me," 
 she decided. 
 
 He hesitated. What he wanted now was time to 
 think, to learn who she was and who her father was, and 
 to adjust himself to this strange reversal of his expecta- 
 tions. 
 
 " Yes ; I would rather do that," he said. 
 
 " Will you come around to our house, then, please ? " 
 
 She caught up her fur collar and muff from a chair 
 and spoke a word to the servant. As she went out on
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 35 
 
 to the porch, he followed her and stooped to pick up 
 his suitcase. 
 
 " Simons will bring that," she said, " unless you'd 
 rather have it with you. It is only a short walk." 
 
 He was recovering from the first shock of her ques- 
 tion now, and, reflecting that men who accompanied 
 Constance Sherrill probably did not carry hand bag- 
 gage, he put the suitcase down and followed her to the 
 walk. As she turned north and he caught step beside 
 her, he studied her with quick interested glances, realiz- 
 ing her difference from all other girls he ever had walked 
 with, but he did not speak to her nor she to him. Turn- 
 ing east at the first corner, they came within sight and 
 hearing again of the turmoil of the lake. 
 
 " We go south here," she said at the corner of the 
 Drive. " Our house is almost back to back with Mr. 
 Corvet's." 
 
 Alan, looking up after he had made the turn with her, 
 recognized the block as one he had seen pictured some- 
 times in magazines and illustrated papers as a " row " 
 of the city's most beautiful homes. Larger, handsomer, 
 and finer than the mansions on Astor Street, each had 
 its lawn or terrace in front and on both sides, where 
 snow-mantled shrubs and straw-bound rosebushes sug- 
 gested the gardens of spring. They turned in at the 
 entrance of a house in the middle of the block and went 
 up the low, wide stone steps ; the door opened to them 
 without ring or knock ; a servant in the hall within took 
 Alan's hat and coat, and he followed Constance past 
 some great room upon his right to a smaller one farther 
 down the hall. 
 
 " Will you wait here, please ? " she asked. 
 
 He sat down, and she left him ; when her footsteps nad
 
 36 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 died away, and he could hear no other sounds except the 
 occasional soft tread of some servant, he twisted himself 
 about in his chair and looked around. A door between 
 the room he was in and the large room which had been 
 upon his right as they came in a drawing-room 
 stood open ; he could see into the drawing-room, and he 
 could see through the other door a portion of the hall ; 
 his inspection of these increased the bewilderment he 
 felt. Who were these Sherrills ? Who was Corvet, and 
 what was his relation to the Sherrills? What, beyond 
 all, was their and Corvet's relation to Alan Conrad 
 to himself? The shock and confusion he had felt at the 
 nature of his reception in Corvet's house, and the 
 strangeness of his transition from his little Kansas 
 town to a place and people such as this, had prevented 
 him from inquiring directly from Constance Sherrill as 
 to that ; and, on her part, she had assumed, plainly, that 
 he already knew and need not be told. 
 
 He got up And moved about the rooms ; they, like all 
 rooms, must tell something about the people who lived in 
 them. The rooms were large and open; Alan, in 
 dreaming and fancying to himself the places to which he 
 might some day be summoned, had never dreamed of 
 entering such a home as this. For it was a home ; in its 
 light and in its furnishings there was nothing of the 
 stiffness and aloofness which Alan, never having seen 
 such rooms except in pictures, had imagined to be neces- 
 sary evils accompanying riches and luxury ; it was not 
 the richness of its furnishings that impressed him first, 
 it was its livableness. Among the more modern pieces 
 in the drawing-room and hall were some which were 
 antique. In the part of the hall that he could see, a 
 black and ancient-looking chair whose lines he recog-
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 37 
 
 nized, stood against the wall. He had seen chairs like 
 that, heirlooms of colonial Massachusetts or Connecti- 
 cut, cherished in Kansas farmhouses and recalling some 
 long-past exodus of the family from New England. On 
 the wall of the drawing-room, among the beautiful and 
 elusive paintings and etchings, was a picture of a ship, 
 plainly framed ; he moved closer to look at it, but he did 
 not know what kind of ship it was except that it was a 
 sailing ship of some long-disused design. Then he drew 
 back again into the smaller room where he had been left, 
 and sat down again to wait. 
 
 A comfortable fire of cannel coal was burning in this 
 smaller room in a black fire-basket set in a white marble 
 grate, obviously much older than the house; there were 
 big easy leather chairs before it, and beside it there 
 were bookcases. On one of these stood a two-handled 
 silver trophy cup, and hung high upon the wall above 
 the mantel was a long racing sweep with the date '85 
 painted in black across the blade. He had the feeling, 
 coming quite unconsciously, of liking the people who 
 lived in this handsome house. 
 
 He straightened and looked about, then got up, as 
 Constance Sherrill came back into the room. 
 
 " Father is not here just now," she said. " We 
 weren't sure from your telegram exactly at what hour 
 you would arrive, and that was why I waited at Mr. 
 Corvet's to be sure we wouldn't miss you. I have tele- 
 phoned father, and he's coming home at once." 
 
 She hesitated an instant in the doorway, then turned 
 to go out again. 
 
 "Miss Sherrill" he said. 
 
 She halted. " Yes." 
 
 " You told me you had been waiting for me to rome
 
 38 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 and explain my connection with Mr. Corvet. Well 
 I can't do that ; that is what I came here hoping to find 
 out." 
 
 She came back toward him slowly. 
 
 " What do you mean? " she asked. 
 
 He was forcing himself to disregard the strangeness 
 which his surroundings and all that had happened in the 
 last half hour had made him feel; leaning his arms on 
 the back of the chair in which he had been sitting, he 
 managed to smile reassuringly ; and he fought down and 
 controlled resolutely the excitement in his voice, as he 
 told her rapidly the little he knew about himself. 
 
 He could not tell definitely how she was affected by 
 what he said. She flushed slightly, following her first 
 start of surprise after he had begun to speak ; when he 
 had finished, he saw that she was a little pale. 
 
 " Then you don't know anything about Mr. Corvet 
 at all," she said. 
 
 " No ; until I got his letter sending for me here, I'd 
 never seen or heard his name." 
 
 She was thoughtful for a moment. 
 
 " Thank you for telling me," she said. " I'll tell my 
 father when he comes." 
 
 " Your father is ? " he ventured. 
 
 She understood now that the name of Sherrill had 
 meant nothing to him. " Father is Mr. Corvet's closest 
 friend, and his business partner as well," she explained. 
 
 He thought she was going to tell him something more 
 about them ; but she seemed then to decide to leave that 
 for her father to do. She crossed to the big chair be- 
 side the grate and seated herself. As she sat looking at 
 him, hands clasped beneath her chin, and her elbows rest- 
 ing on the arm of the chair, there was speculation and
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 39 
 
 interest in her gaze ; but she did not ask him anything 
 more about himself. She inquired about the Kansas 
 weather that week in comparison with the storm which 
 had just ceased in Chicago, and about Blue Rapids, 
 which she said she had looked up upon the map, and he 
 took this chat for what it was notification that she 
 did not wish to continue the other topic just then. 
 
 She, he saw, was listening, like himself, for the sound 
 of Sherrill's arrival at the house; and when it came, 
 she recognized it first, rose, and excused herself. He 
 heard her voice in the hall, then her father's deeper 
 voice which answered ; and ten minutes later, he looked 
 up to see the man these things had told him must be 
 Sherrill standing in the door and looking at him. 
 
 He was a tall man, sparely built ; his broad shoulders 
 had been those of an athlete in his youth ; now, at some- 
 thing over fifty, they had taken on a slight, rather 
 studious stoop, and his brown hair had thinned upon 
 his forehead. His eyes, gray like his daughter's, were 
 thoughtful eyes; just now deep trouble filled them. 
 His look and bearing of a refined and educated gentle- 
 man took away all chance of offense from the long, 
 inquiring scrutiny to which he subjected Alan's features 
 and figure before he came into the room. 
 
 Alan had risen at sight of him ; Sherrill, as he came in, 
 motioned him back to his seat; he did not sit down 
 himself, but crossed to the mantel and leaned against 
 it. 
 
 " I am Lawrence Sherrill," he said. 
 
 As the tall, graceful, thoughtful man stood looking 
 down at him, Alan could tell nothing of the attitude of 
 this friend of Benjamin Corvet toward himself. His 
 manner had the same reserve toward Alan, the same
 
 40 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 questioning consideration of him, that Constance Sher- 
 rill had had after Alan had told her about himself. 
 
 " My daughter has repeated to me what you told her, 
 Mr. Conrad," Sherrill observed. "Is there anything 
 you want to add to me regarding that? " 
 
 " There's nothing I can add," Alan answered. " I 
 told her all that I know about myself." 
 
 "And about Mr. Corvet?" 
 
 " I know nothing at all about Mr. Corvet." 
 
 " I am going to tell you some things about Mr. Cor- 
 vet," Sherrill said. " I had reason I do net want to 
 explain just yet what that reason was for thinking 
 you could tell us certain things about Mr. Corvet, which 
 would, perhaps, make plainer what has happened to him. 
 When I tell you about him now, it is in the hope that, 
 in that way, I may awake some forgotten memory of 
 him in you ; if not that, you may discover some coinci- 
 dences of dates or events in Corvet's life with dates or 
 events in your own. Will you tell me frankly, if you 
 do discover anything like that? " 
 
 " Yes ; certainly." 
 
 Alan leaned forward in the big chair, hands clasped 
 between his knees, his blood tingling sharply in his face 
 and fingertips. So Sherrill expected to make him re- 
 member Corvet ! There was strange excitement in this, 
 and he waited eagerly for Sherrill to begin. For sev- 
 eral moments, Sherrill paced up and down before the 
 fire ; then he returned to his place before the mantel. 
 
 "I first met Benjamin Corvet," he commenced, 
 " nearly thirty years ago. I had come West for the 
 first time the year before ; I was about your own age 
 and had been graduated from college only a short time, 
 and a business opening had offered itself here.
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 41 
 
 " There was a sentimental reason I think I must 
 call it that as well, for my coming to Chicago. Un- 
 til my generation, the property of our family had 
 always been largely and generally exclusively in 
 ships. It is a Salem family; a Sherrill was a sea- 
 captain, living in Salem, they say, when his neighbors 
 and he, I suppose hanged witches ; we had privateers 
 in 1812 and our clippers went round the Horn in '49. 
 The Alabama ended our ships in '63, as it ended prac- 
 tically the rest of the American shipping on the Atlan- 
 tic; and in '73, when our part of the Alabama claims 
 was paid us, my mother put it in bonds waiting for me 
 to grow up. 
 
 " Sentiment, when I came of age, made me want to 
 put this money back into ships flying the American flag; 
 but there was small chance of putting it and keeping 
 it, with profit in American ships on the sea. In Bos- 
 ton and New York, I had seen the foreign flags on the 
 deep-water ships British, German, French, Nor- 
 wegian, Swedish, and Greek; our flag flew mostly on 
 ferries and excursion steamers. But times were boom- 
 ing on the great lakes. Chicago, which had more than 
 recovered from the fire, was doubling its population 
 every decade ; Cleveland, Duluth, and Milwaukee were 
 leaping up as ports. Men were growing millions of 
 bushels of grain which they couldn't ship except by 
 lake ; hundreds of thousands of tons of ore had to go by 
 water; and there were tens of, millions of feet of pine 
 and hardwood from the Michigan forests. Sailing ves- 
 sels such as the Sherrills had always operated, it is 
 true, had seen their day and were disappearing from 
 the lakes ; were being ' sold,' many of them, as the say- 
 ing is, * to the insurance companies ' by deliberate
 
 4 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 wrecking. Steamers were taking their place. Towing 
 had come in. The first of the whalebacks was built 
 about thai time, and we began to see those processions 
 of a barge and two, three, or four tows which the lake- 
 men called ' the sow and her pigs.' Men of all sorts had 
 come forward, of course, and, serving the situation 
 more or less accidentally, were making themselves 
 rich. 
 
 " It was railroading which had brought me West ; 
 but I had brought with me the Alabama money to put 
 into ships. I have called it sentiment, but it was not 
 merely that ; I felt, young man though I was, that this 
 transportation matter was all one thing, and that in 
 the end the railroads would own the ships. I have never 
 engaged very actively in the operation of the ships ; my 
 daughter would like me to be more active in it than I 
 have been; but ever since, I have had money in lake 
 vessels. It was the year that I began that sort of in- 
 vestment that I first met Corvet." 
 
 Alan looked up quickly. " Mr. Corvet was ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Corvet was is a lakeman," Sherrill said. 
 
 Alan sat motionless, as he recollected the strange 
 exaltation that had come to him when he saw the lake 
 for the first time. Should he tell Sherrill of that ? He 
 decided it was too vague, too indefinite to be mentioned ; 
 no doubt any other man used only to the prairie might 
 have felt the same. 
 
 " He was a ship owner, then," he said. 
 
 " Yes ; he was a shipowner not, however, on a large 
 scale at that time. He had been a master, sailing ships 
 which belonged to others ; then he had sailed one of his 
 own. He was operating then, I believe, two vessels;
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 43 
 
 but with the boom times on the lakes, his interests were 
 beginning to expand. I met him frequently in the next 
 few years, and we became close friends." 
 
 Sherrill broke off and stared an instant down at the 
 rug. Alan bent forward ; he made no interruption but 
 only watched Sherrill attentively. 
 
 " It was one of the great advantages of the West, I 
 think and particularly of Chicago at that time 
 that it gave opportunity for friendships of that sort," 
 Sherrill said. " Corvet was a man of a sort I would 
 have been far less likely ever to have known intimately 
 in the East. He was both what the lakes had made 
 him and what he had made of himself ; a great reader 
 wholly self-educated; he had, I think, many of the at- 
 tributes of a great man at least, they were those of 
 a man who should have become great; he had imagina- 
 tion and vision. His whole thought and effort, at that 
 time, were absorbed in furthering and developing the 
 traffic on the lakes, and not at all from mere desire for 
 personal success. I met him for the first time one day 
 when I went to his office on some business. He had just 
 opened an office at that time in one of the old ram- 
 shackle rows along the river front; there was nothing 
 at all pretentious about it the contrary, in fact ; but 
 as I went in and waited with the others who were there 
 to see him, I had the sense of being in the ante-room of 
 a great man. I do not mean there was any idiotic 
 pomp or lackyism or red tape about it; I mean that 
 the others who were waiting to see him, and who knew 
 him, were keyed up by the anticipation and keyed me 
 up. . . . 
 
 " I saw as much as I could of him after that, and our 
 friendship became very close.
 
 44 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " In 1892, when I married and took my residence here 
 on the lake shore the house stood where this one 
 stands now Corvet bought the house on Astor Street. 
 His only reason for doing it was, I believe, his desire 
 to be near me. The neighborhood was what they call 
 fashionable ; neither Corvet nor Mrs. Corvet he had 
 married in 1889 had social ambitions of that sort. 
 Mrs. Corvet came from Detroit ; she was of good family 
 there a strain of French blood in the family ; she was 
 a schoolteacher when he married her, and she had made 
 a wonderful wife for him a good woman, a woman of 
 very high ideals ; it was great grief to both of them that 
 they had no children. 
 
 "Between 1886, when I first met him, and 1895, 
 Corvet laid the foundation of great success; his boats 
 seemed lucky, men liked to work for him, and he got the 
 best skippers and crews. A Corvet captain boasted 
 of it and, if he had had bad luck on another line, be- 
 lieved his luck changed when he took a Corvet ship; 
 cargoes in Corvet bottoms somehow always reached 
 port; there was a saying that in storm a Corvet ship 
 never asked help; it gave it; certainly in twenty years 
 no Corvet ship had suffered serious disaster. Corvet 
 was not yet rich, but unless accident or undue compe- 
 tition intervened, he was certain to become so. Then 
 something happened." 
 
 Sherrill looked away at evident loss how to describe 
 it. 
 
 " To the ships? " Alan asked him. 
 
 "No; to him. In 1896, for no apparent reason, a 
 great change came over him." 
 
 "In 1896!" 
 
 " That was the year."
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 45 
 
 Alan bent forward, his heart throbbing in his throat. 
 " That was also the year when I was brought and left 
 with the Weltons in Kansas," he said. 
 
 Sherrill did not speak for a moment. " I thought," 
 he said finally, " it must have been about that time ; but 
 you did not tell my daughter the exact date." 
 
 " What kind of change came over him that year ? " 
 Alan asked. 
 
 Sherrill gazed down at the rug, then at Alan, then 
 past him. " A change in his way of living," he replied. 
 " The Corvet line of boats went on, expanded ; interests 
 were acquired in other lines ; and Corvet and those allied 
 with him swiftly grew rich. But in all this great devel- 
 opment, for which Corvet's genius and ability had laid 
 the foundation, Corvet himself ceased to take active 
 part. I do not mean that he formally retired ; he re- 
 tained his control of the business, but he very seldom 
 went to the office and, except for occasional violent, 
 almost pettish interference in the affairs of the com- 
 pany, he left it in the hands of others. He took into 
 partnership, about a year later, Henry Spearman, a 
 young man who had been merely a mate on one of his 
 ships. This proved subsequently to have been a good 
 business move, for Spearman has tremendous energy, 
 daring, and enterprise ; and no doubt Corvet had recog- 
 nized these qualities in him before others did. But at 
 the time it excited considerable comment. It marked, 
 certainly, the beginning of Corvet's withdrawal from 
 active management. Since then he has been ostensibly 
 and publicly the head of the concern, but he has left the 
 management almost entirely to Spearman. The per- 
 sonal change in Corvet at that time is harder for me to 
 describe to you."
 
 46 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Sherrill halted, his eyes dark with thought, his lips 
 pressed closely together ; Alan waited. 
 
 ** When I saw Corvet again, in the summer of '96 
 I had been South during the latter part of the winter 
 and East through the spring I was impressed by the 
 vague but, to me, alarming change in him. I was re- 
 minded, I recall, of a friend I had had in college who 
 had thought he was in perfect health and had gone to 
 an examiner for life insurance and had been refused, 
 and was trying to deny to himself and others that any- 
 thing could be the matter. But with Corvet I knew 
 the trouble was not physical. The next year his wife 
 left him." 
 
 " The year of? " Alan asked. 
 
 "That was 1897. We did not know at first, of 
 course, that the separation was permanent. It proved 
 so, however; and Corvet, I know now, had understood 
 it to be that way from the first. Mrs. Corvet went to 
 France the French blood in her, I suppose, made her 
 select that country; she had for a number of years a 
 cottage near Trouville, in Normandy, and was active in 
 church work. I know there was almost no communica- 
 tion between herself and her husband during those 
 years, and her leaving him markedly affected Corvet. 
 He had been very fond of her and proud of her. I had 
 seen him sometimes watching her while she talked ; he 
 would gaze at her steadily and then look about at the 
 other women in the room and back to her, and his head 
 would nod just perceptibly with satisfaction ; and she 
 would see it sometimes and smile. There was no ques- 
 tion of their understanding and affection up to the very 
 time she so suddenly and so strangely left him. She 
 died in Trouville in the spring of 1910, and Corvet's
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 47 
 
 first information of her death come to him through a 
 paragraph in a newspaper." 
 
 Alan had started; Sherrill looked at him question- 
 ingly. 
 
 " The spring of 1910," Alan explained, " was when 
 I received the bank draft for fifteen hundred dollars." 
 
 Sherrill nodded; he did not seem surprised to hear 
 this ; rather it appeared to be confirmation of something 
 in his own thought. 
 
 " Following his wife's leaving him," Sherrill went on, 
 " Corvet saw very little of any one. He spent most of 
 his time in his own house; occasionally he lunched at 
 his club ; at rare intervals, and always unexpectedly, he 
 appeared at his office. I remember that summer he was 
 terribly disturbed because one of his ships was lost. It 
 was not a bad disaster, for every one on the ship was 
 saved, and hull and cargo were fully covered by insur- 
 ance; but the Corvet record was broken; a Corvet ship 
 had appealed for help ; a Corvet vessel had not reached 
 port. . . . And later in the fall, when two deckhands 
 were washed from another of his vessels and drowned, 
 he was again greatly wrought up, though his ships still 
 had a most favorable record. In 1902 I proposed to 
 him that I buy full ownership in the vessels I partly 
 controlled and ally them with those he and Spearman 
 operated. It was a time of combination the rail- 
 roads and the steel interests were acquiring the lake 
 vessels ; and though I believed in this, I was not willing 
 to enter any combination which would take the name of 
 Sherrill off the list of American shipowners. I did not 
 give Corvet this as my reason ; and he made me at that 
 time a very strange counter-proposition which I have 
 never been able to understand, and which entailed the
 
 48 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 very obliteration of my name which I was trying to 
 avoid. He proposed that I accept a partnership in his 
 concern on a most generous basis, but that the name of 
 the company remain as it was, merely Corvet and 
 Spearman. Spearman's influence and mine prevailed 
 upon him to allow my name to appear ; since then, the 
 firm name has been Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. 
 
 " Our friendship had strengthened and ripened dur- 
 ing those years. The intense activity of Corvet's mind, 
 which as a younger man he had directed wholly to the 
 shipping, was directed, after he had isolated himself in 
 this way, to other things. He took up almost fever- 
 ishly an immense number of studies strange studies 
 most of them for a man whose youth had been almost 
 violently active and who had once been a lake captain. 
 I cannot tell you what they all were geology, eth- 
 nology, nearly a score of subjects ; he corresponded with 
 various scientific societies ; he has given almost the whole 
 of his attention to such things for about twenty years. 
 Since I have known him, he has transformed himself 
 from the rather rough, uncouth though always 
 spiritually minded man he was when I first met him 
 into an educated gentleman whom anybody would be 
 glad to know; but he has made very few acquaintances 
 in that time, and has kept almost none of his old friend- 
 ships. He has lived alone in the house on Astor Street 
 with only one servant the same one all these years. 
 
 " The only house he has visited with any frequency 
 has been mine. He has always liked my wife ; he had 
 he has a great affection for my daughter, who, when she 
 was a child, ran in and out of his home as she pleased. 
 He would take long walks with her; he'd come here 
 sometimes in the afternoon to have tea with her on
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 49 
 
 stormy days ; he liked to have her play and sing to him. 
 My daughter believes now that his present disappear- 
 ance whatever has happened to him is connected 
 in some way with herself. I do not think that is so " 
 
 Sherrill broke off and stood in thought for a moment ; 
 he seemed to consider, and to decide that it was not 
 necessary to say anything more on that subject. 
 
 " Recently Corvet's moroseness and irritability had 
 very greatly increased ; he had quarreled frequently and 
 bitterly with Spearman over business affairs. He had 
 seemed more than usually eager at times to see me or 
 to see my daughter; and at other times he had seemed 
 to avoid us and keep away. I have had the feeling of 
 late, though I could not give any actual reason for it 
 except Corvet's manner and look, that the disturbance 
 which had oppressed him for twenty years was culmi- 
 nating in some way. That culmination seems to have 
 been reached three days ago, when he wrote summoning 
 you here. Henry Spearman, wliom I asked about you 
 when I learned you were coming, had never heard of 
 you ; Mr. Corvet's servant had never heard of you. . . . 
 
 " Is there anything in what I have told you which 
 makes it possible for you to recollect or to explain ? " 
 
 Alan shook his head, flushed, and then grew a little 
 pale. What Sherrill told him had excited him by the 
 coincidences it offered between events in Benjamin Cor- 
 vet's life and his own ; it had not made him " recollect " 
 Corvet, but it had given definiteness and direction to his 
 speculations as to Corvet's relation to himself. 
 
 Sherrill drew one of the large chairs nearer to Alan 
 and sat down facing him. He felt in an inner pocket 
 and brought out an envelope ; from the envelope he took 
 three pictures, and handed the smallest of them to Alan.
 
 50 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 As Alan took it, he saw that it was a tintype of him- 
 self as a round-faced boy of seven. 
 
 " That is you? " Sherrill asked. 
 
 " Yes ; it was taken by the photographer in Blue 
 Rapids. We all had our pictures taken on that day 
 Jim, Betty, and I. Mr. Welton " for the first time 
 Alan consciously avoided giving the title " Father " to 
 the man in Kansas " sent one of me to the * general 
 delivery ' address of the person in Chicago." 
 
 "And this?" 
 
 The second picture, Alan saw, was one that had been 
 taken in front of the barn at the farm. It showed 
 Alan at twelve, in overalls and barefooted, holding a 
 stick over his head at which a shepherd dog was jump- 
 ing. 
 
 " Yes ; that is Shep and I Jim's and my dog, Mr. 
 Sherrill. It was taken by a man who stopped at the 
 house for dinner one day ; he liked Shep and wanted a 
 picture of him; so he got me to make Shep jump, and 
 he took it." 
 
 " You don't remember anything about the man ? " 
 
 " Only that he had a camera and wanted a picture 
 of Shep." 
 
 " Doesn't it occur to you that it was your picture 
 he wanted, and that he had been sent to get it? I 
 wanted your verification that these earlier pictures were 
 of you, but this last one is easily recognizable." 
 
 Sherrill unfolded the third picture ; it was larger than 
 the others and had been folded across the middle to get 
 it into the envelope. Alan leaned forward to look at 
 it. 
 
 " That is the University of Kansas football team," 
 he said. " I am the second one in the front row ; I
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 51 
 
 played end my junior year and tackle when I was a 
 senior. Mr. Corvet ?" 
 
 " Yes ; Mr. Corvet had these pictures. They came 
 into my possession day before yesterday, the day after 
 Corvet disappeared; I do not want to tell just yet how 
 they did that." 
 
 Alan's face, which had been flushed at first with ex- 
 citement, had gone quite pale, and his hands, as he 
 clenched and unclenched them nervously, were cold, and 
 his lips were very dry. He could think of no possible 
 relationship between Benjamin Corvet and himself, 
 except one, which could account for Corvet's obtaining 
 and keeping these pictures of him through the years. 
 As Sherrill put the pictures back into their envelope and 
 the envelope back into his pocket, and Alan watched 
 him, Alan felt nearly certain now that it had not been 
 proof of the nature of this relationship that Sherrill 
 had been trying to get from him, but only corroboration 
 of some knowledge, or partial knowledge, which had 
 come to Sherrill in some other way. The existence of 
 this knowledge was implied by SherrilPs withholding 
 of the way he had come into possession of the pictures, 
 and his manner showed now that he had received from 
 Alan the confirmation for which he had been seeking. 
 
 " I think you know who I am," Alan said. 
 
 Sherrill had risen and stood looking down at him. 
 
 " You have guessed, if I am not mistaken, that you 
 are Corvet's son." 
 
 The color flamed to Alan's face for an instant, then 
 left it paler than before. " I thought it must be that 
 way," he answered ; " but you said he had no chil- 
 dren." 
 
 " Benjamin Corvet and his wife had no children."
 
 52 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " I thought that was what you meant." A twinge 
 twisted Alan's face; he tried to control it but for a 
 moment could not. 
 
 Sherrill suddenly put his hand on Alan's shoulder; 
 there was something so friendly, so affectionate in the 
 quick, impulsive grasp of Sherrill's fingers, that Alan's 
 heart throbbed to it; for the first time some one had 
 touched him in full, unchecked feeling for him; for 
 the first time, the unknown about him had failed to 
 be a barrier and, instead, had drawn another to 
 him. 
 
 "Do not misapprehend your father," Sherrill said 
 quietly. "I cannot prevent what other people may 
 think when they learn this ; but I do not share such 
 thoughts with them. There is much in this I cannot 
 understand ; but I know that it is not merely the result 
 of what others may think it of ' a wife in more ports 
 than one,' as you will hear the lakemen put it. What 
 lies under this is some great misadventure which had 
 changed and frustrated all your father's life." 
 
 Sherrill crossed the room and rang for a servant. 
 
 " I am going to ask you to be my guest for a short 
 time, Alan," he announced. " I have had your bag 
 carried to your room ; the man will show you which one 
 it is." 
 
 Alan hesitated ; he felt that Sherrill had not told him 
 all he knew that there were some things Sherrill pur- 
 posely was withholding from him ; but he could not force 
 Sherrill to tell more than he wished; so after an in- 
 stant's irresolution, he accepted the dismissal. 
 
 Sherrill walked with him to the door, and gave his 
 directions to the servant; he stood watching, as Alan 
 and the man went up the stairs. Then he went back
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 53 
 
 and seated himself in the chair Alan had occupied, and 
 sat with hands grasping the arms of the chair while he 
 stared into the fire. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later, he heard his daughter's foot- 
 steps and looked up. Constance halted in the door to 
 assure herself that he was now alone ; then she came to 
 him and, seating herself on the arm of the chair, she put 
 her hand on his thin hair and smoothed it softly ; he 
 felt for her other hand with his and found it, and held 
 it clasped between his palms. 
 
 " You've found out who he is, father? " she asked. 
 
 " The facts have left me no doubt at all as to that, 
 little daughter." 
 
 " No doubt that he is who? " 
 
 Sherrill was silent for a moment not from uncer- 
 tainty, but because of the effect which what he must say 
 would have upon her; then he told her in almost the 
 same words he had used to Alan. Constance started, 
 flushed, and her hand stiffened convulsively between her 
 father's. 
 
 They said nothing more to one 'another; Sherrill 
 seemed considering and debating something within him- 
 self; and presently he seemed to come to a decision. 
 He got up, stooped and touched his daughter's hand, 
 and left the room. He went up the stairs and on the 
 second floor he went to a front room and knocked. 
 Alan's voice told him to come in. Sherrill went in and, 
 when he had made sure that the servant was not with 
 Alan, he closed the door carefully behind him. 
 
 Then he turned back to Alan, and for an instant 
 stood indecisive as though he did not know how to begin 
 what he wanted to say. As he glanced down at a key 
 he took from his pocket, his indecision seemed to receive
 
 54. THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 direction and inspiration from it ; and he put it down on 
 Alan's dresser. 
 
 " I've brought you," he said evenly, " the key to your 
 house." 
 
 Alan gazed at him, bewildered. " The key to my 
 house? " 
 
 " To the house on Astor Street," Sherrill confirmed. 
 " Your father deeded the house and its furniture and all 
 its contents to you the day before he disappeared. I 
 have not the deed here; it came into my hands the day 
 before yesterday at the same time I got possession of 
 the pictures which might or might not, for all I knew 
 then be you. I have the deed down-town and will 
 give it to you. The house is yours in fee simple, given 
 you by your father, not bequeathed to you by him to 
 become your property after his death. He meant by 
 that, I think, even more than the mere acknowledgment 
 that he is your father." 
 
 Sherrill walked to the window and stood as though 
 looking out, but his eyes were blank with thought. 
 
 " For almost twenty years," he said, " your father, 
 as I have told you, lived in that house practically alone ; 
 during all those years a shadow of some sort was over 
 him. I don't know at all, Alan, what that shadow was. 
 But it is certain that whatever it was that had changed 
 him from the man he was when I first knew him culmi- 
 nated three days ago when he wrote to you. It may be 
 that the consequences of his writing to you were such 
 that, after he had sent the letter, he could not bring 
 himself to face them and so has merely . . . gone away. 
 In that case, as we stand here talking, he is still alive. 
 On the other hand, his writing you may have precipi- 
 tated something that 1 know nothing of. In either
 
 DISCUSSION OF A SHADOW 55 
 
 case, if he has left anywhere any evidence of what it is 
 that changed and oppressed him for all these years, or 
 if there is any evidence of what has happened to him 
 now, it will be found in his house." 
 
 Sherrill turned back to Alan. " It is for you not 
 me, Alan," he said simply, " to make that search. I 
 have thought seriously about it, this last half hour, and 
 have decided that is as he would want it perhaps as 
 he did want it to be. He could have told me what 
 his trouble was any time in these twenty years, if he 
 had been willing I should know ; but he never did." 
 
 Sherrill was silent for a moment. 
 
 " There are some things your father did just before 
 he disappeared that I have not told you yet," he went 
 on. " The reason I have not told them is that I have 
 not yet fully decided in my own mind what action they 
 call for from me. I can assure you, however, that it 
 would not help you now in any way to know them." 
 
 He thought again ; then glanced to the key on the 
 dresser and seemed to recollect. 
 
 " That key," he said, " is one I made your father 
 give me some time ago ; he was at home alone so much 
 that I was afraid something might happen to him there. 
 He gave it me because he knew I would not misuse it. I 
 used it, for the first time, three days ago, when, after 
 becoming certain something had gone wrong with him, 
 I went to the house to search for him ; my daughter used 
 it this morning when she went there to wait for you. 
 Your father, of course, had a key to the front door like 
 this one ; his servant has a key to the servants' entrance. 
 I do not know of any other keys." 
 
 " The servant is in charge there now? " Alan asked. 
 
 " Just now there is no one in the house. The
 
 56 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 servant, after your father disappeared, thought that, if 
 he had merely gone away, he might have gone back to 
 his birthplace near Manistique, and he went up there 
 to look for him. I had a wire from him to-day that he 
 had not found him and was coming back." 
 
 Sherrill waited a moment to see whether there was 
 anything more Alan wanted to ask ; then he went out.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 AS the door closed behind Sherrill, Alan went over 
 to the dresser and picked up the key which Sher- 
 rill had left. It was, he saw, a flat key of a sort 
 common twenty years before, not of the more recent 
 corrugated shape. As he looked at it and then away 
 from it, thoughtfully turning it over and over in his 
 fingers, it brought no sense of possession to him. Sher- 
 rill had said the house was his, had been given him by his 
 father; but that fact could not actually make it his in 
 his realization. He could not imagine himself owning 
 such a house or what he would do with it if it were his. 
 He put the key, after a moment, on the ring with two or 
 three other keys he had, and dropped them into his 
 pocket ; then he crossed to a chair and sat down. 
 
 He found, as he tried now to disentangle the events 
 of the afternoon, that from them, and especially from 
 his last interview with Sherrill, two facts stood out most 
 clearly. The first of these related more directly to his 
 father to Benjamin Corvet. When such a man as 
 Benjamin Corvet must have been, disappears when, 
 without warning and without leaving any account of 
 himself he vanishes from among those who knew him 
 the persons most closely interested pass through three 
 stages of anxiety. They doubt first whether the dis- 
 appearance is real and whether inquiry on their part
 
 58 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 will not be resented ; they waken next to realization that 
 the man is actually gone, and that something must be 
 done; the third stage is open and public inquiry. 
 Whatever might be the nature of the information Sher- 
 rill was withholding from him, Alan saw that its effect 
 on Sherrill had been to shorten very greatly Sherrill's 
 time of doubt as to Corvet's actual disappearance. The 
 Sherrills particularly Sherrill himself had been 
 in the second stage of anxiety when Alan came; they 
 had been awaiting Alan's arrival in the belief that Alan 
 could give them information which would show them 
 what must be " done " about Corvet. Alan had not 
 been able to give them this information ; but his coming, 
 and his interview with Sherrill, had strongly influenced 
 Sherrill's attitude. Sherrill had shrunk, still more 
 definitely and consciously, after that, from prying into 
 the affairs of his friend ; he had now, strangely, almost 
 withdrawn himself from the inquiry, and had given it 
 over to Alan. 
 
 Sherrill had spoken of the possibility that something 
 might have " happened " to Covert ; but it was plain 
 he did not believe he had met with actual violence. He 
 had left it to Alan to examine Corvet's house; but he 
 had not urged Alan to examine it at once; he had left 
 the time of the examination to be determined by Alan. 
 This showed clearly that Sherrill believed perhaps 
 had sufficient reason for believing that Corvet had 
 simply " gone away." The second of Alan's two facts 
 related even more closely and personally to Alan him- 
 self. Corvet, Sherrill had said, had married in 1889. 
 But Sherrill in long knowledge of his friend, had shown 
 firm conviction that there had been no mere vulgar 
 liaison in Corvet's life. Did this mean that there might
 
 " ARRIVED SAFE ; WELL " 59 
 
 have been some previous marriage of Alan's father 
 some marriage which had strangely overlapped and nul- 
 lified his public marriage? In that case, Alan could 
 be, not only in fact but legally, Corvet's son ; and such 
 things as this, Alan knew, had sometimes happened, 
 and had happened by a strange combination of events, 
 innocently for all parties. Corvet's public separation 
 from his wife, Sherrill had said, had taken place in 
 1897, but the actual separation between them might, 
 possibly, have taken place long before that. 
 
 Alan resolved to hold these questions in abeyance ; he 
 would not accept or grant the stigma which his rela- 
 tionship to Corvet seemed to attach to himself until it 
 had been proved to him. He had come to Chicago ex- 
 pecting, not to find that there had never been anything 
 wrong, but to find that the wrong had been righted in 
 some way at last. But what was most plain of all to 
 him, from what Sherrill had told him, was that the 
 wrong whatever it might be had not been righted ; 
 it existed still. 
 
 The afternoon had changed swiftly into night; dusk 
 had been gathering during his last talk with Sherrill, 
 so that he hardly had been able to see Sherrill's face, 
 and just after Sherrill had left him, full dark had come. 
 Alan did not know how long he had been sitting in the 
 darkness thinking out these things ; but now a little 
 clock which had been ticking steadily in the blackness 
 tinkled six. Alan heard a knock at his door, and when 
 it was repeated, he called, *' Come in." 
 
 The light which came in from the hall, as the door 
 was opened, showed a man servant. The man, after a 
 respectful inquiry, switched on the light. He crossed 
 into the adjoining room a bedroom ; the room where
 
 60 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Alan was, he thought, must be a dressing room, and 
 there was a bath between. Presently the man reap- 
 peared, and moved softly about the room, unpacking 
 Alan's suitcase. He hung Alan's other suit in the closet 
 on hangers; he put the linen, except for one shirt, in 
 the dresser drawers, and he put Alan's few toilet things 
 with the ivory-backed brushes and comb and other 
 articles on the dressing stand. 
 
 Alan watched him queerly; no one except himself 
 ever had unpacked Alan's suitcase before ; the first time 
 he had gone away to college it was a brand new suit- 
 case then " mother " had packed it ; after that first 
 time, Alan had packed and unpacked it. It gave him 
 an odd feeling now to see some one else unpacking his 
 things. The man, having finished and taken everything 
 out, continued to look in the suitcase for something 
 else. 
 
 "I beg pardon, sir," he said finally, "but I cannot 
 find your buttons." 
 
 " I've got them on," Alan said. He took them out 
 and gave them to the valet with a smile ; it was good to 
 have something to smile at, if it was only the realiza- 
 tion that he never had thought before of any one's hav- 
 ing more than one set of buttons for ordinary shirts. 
 Alan wondered, with a sort of trepidation, whether the 
 man would expect to stay and help him dress; but he 
 only put the buttons in the clean shirt and reopened the 
 dresser drawers and laid out a change of things. 
 
 "Is there anything else, sir?" he asked. 
 
 " Nothing, thank you," Alan said. 
 
 " I was to tell you, sir, Mr. Sherrill is sorry he can- 
 not be at home to dinner to-night. Mrs. Sherrill and 
 Miss Sherrill will be here. Dinner is at seven, sir."
 
 "ARRIVED SAFE; WELL" 61 
 
 Alan dressed slowly, after the man had gone ; and at 
 one minute before seven he went down-stairs. 
 
 There was no one in the lower hall and, after an in- 
 stant of irresolution and a glance into the empty 
 drawing-room, he turned into the small room at the 
 opposite side of the hall. A handsome, stately, rather 
 large woman, whom he found there, introduced herself 
 to him formally as Mrs. Sherrill. 
 
 He knew from Sherrill's mention of the year of their 
 marriage that Mrs. Sherrill's age must be about forty- 
 five, but if he had not known this, he would have thought 
 her ten years younger. In her dark eyes and her care- 
 fully dressed, coal-black hair, and in the contour of her 
 youthful looking, handsome face, he could not find any 
 such pronounced resemblance to her daughter as he had 
 seen in Lawrence Sherrill. Her reserved, yet almost 
 too casual acceptance of Alan's presence, told him that 
 she knew all the particulars about himself which Sher- 
 rill had been able to give ; and as Constance came down 
 the stairs and joined them half a minute later, Alan 
 was certain that she also knew. 
 
 Yet there was in her manner toward Alan a difference 
 from that of her mother a difference which seemed 
 almost opposition. Not that Mrs. Sherrill's was un- 
 friendly or critical ; rather, it was kind with the sort of 
 reserved kindness which told Alan, almost as plainly as 
 words, that she had not been able to hold so charitable 
 a conviction in regard to Corvet's relationship with 
 Alan as her husband held, but that she would be only 
 the more considerate to Alan for that. It was this 
 kindness which Constance set herself to oppose, and 
 which she opposed as reservedly and as subtly as it was 
 expressed. It gave Alan a strange, exhilarating sensa-
 
 62 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 tion to realize that, as the three talked together, this 
 girl was defending him. 
 
 Not him alone, of course, or him chiefly. It was 
 Benjamin Corvet, her friend, whom she was defending 
 primarily; yet it was Alan too; and all went on with- 
 out a word about Benjamin Corvet or his affairs being 
 spoken. 
 
 Dinner was announced, and they went into the great 
 dining-room, where the table with its linen, silver, and 
 china gleamed under shaded lights. The oldest and 
 most dignified of the three men servants who waited 
 upon them in the dining-room Alan thought must be a 
 butler a species of creature of whom Alan had heard 
 but never had seen ; the other servants, at least, received 
 and handed things through him, and took their orders 
 from him. As the silent-footed servants moved about, 
 and Alan kept up a somewhat strained conversation 
 with Mrs. Sherrill a conversation in which no refer- 
 ence to his own affairs was yet made he wondered 
 whether Constance and her mother always dressed for 
 dinner in full evening dress as now, or whether they 
 were going out. A word from Constance to her mother 
 told him this latter was the case, and while it did not 
 give complete answer to his internal query, it showed 
 him his first glimpse of social engagements as a part of 
 the business of life. In spite of the fact that Benjamin 
 Corvet, SherrilPs close friend, had disappeared or 
 perhaps because he had disappeared and, as yet, it was 
 not publicly known their and Sherrill's engagements 
 had to be fulfilled. 
 
 What Sherrill had told Alan of his father had been 
 iterating itself again and again in Alan's thoughts; 
 now he recalled that Sherrill had said that his daughter
 
 ARRIVED SAFE ; WELL " 63 
 
 believed that Corvet's disappearance had had some- 
 thing to do with her. Alan had wondered at the mo- 
 ment how that could be; and as he watched her across 
 the table and now and then exchanged a comment with 
 her, it puzzled him still more. He had opportunity to 
 ask her when she waited with him in the library, after 
 dinner was finished and her mother had gone up-stairs ; 
 but he did not see then how to go about it. 
 
 " I'm sorry," she said to him, " that we can't be home 
 to-night ; but perhaps you would rather be alone? " 
 
 He did not answer that. 
 
 " Have you a picture here, Miss Sherrill, of my 
 father?" he asked. 
 
 " Uncle Benny had had very few pictures taken ; but 
 there is one here." 
 
 She went into the study, and came back with a book 
 open at a half-tone picture of Benjamin Corvet. Alan 
 took it from her and carried it quickly closer to the 
 light. The face that looked up to him from the heavily 
 glazed page was regular of feature, handsome in a way, 
 and forceful. There were imagination and vigor of 
 thought in the broad, smooth forehead ; the eyes were 
 strangely moody and brooding; the mouth was gentle, 
 rather kindly ; it was a queerly impelling, haunting 
 face. This was his father ! But, as Alan held the pic- 
 ture, gazing down upon it, the only emotion which came 
 to him was realization that he felt none. He had not 
 expected to know his father from strangers on the 
 street; but he had expected, when told that his father 
 was before him, to feel through and through him the call 
 of a common blood. Now, except for consternation at 
 his own lack of feeling, he had no emotion of any sort ; 
 he could not attach to this man, because he bore the
 
 64 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 name which some one had told him was his father's, the 
 passions which, when dreaming of his father, he had 
 felt. 
 
 As he looked up from the picture to the girl who had 
 given it to him, startled at himself and believing she 
 must think his lack of feeling strange and unnatural, he 
 surprised her gazing at him with wetness in her eyes. 
 He fancied at first it must be for his father, and that 
 the picture had brought back poignantly her fears. 
 But she was not looking at the picture, but at him ; and 
 when his eyes met hers, she quickly turned away. 
 
 His own eyes filled, and he choked. He wanted to 
 thank her for her manner to him in the afternoon, for 
 defending his father and him, as she had at the dinner 
 table, and now for this unplanned, impulsive sympathy 
 when she saw how he had not been able to feel for this 
 man who was his father and how he was dismayed by it. 
 But he could not put his gratitude in words. 
 
 A servant's voice came from the door, startling him. 
 
 " Mrs. Sherrill wishes you told she is waiting, Miss 
 Sherrill." 
 
 "I'll be there at once." Constance, also, seemed 
 startled and confused ; but she delayed and looked back 
 to Alan. 
 
 " If if we fail to find your father," she said, " I 
 want to tell you what a man he was." 
 
 " Will you? " Alan asked. " Will you? " 
 
 She left him swiftly, and he heard her mother's voice 
 in the hall. A motor door closed sharply, after a 
 minute or so ; then the house door closed. Alan stood 
 still a moment longer, then, remembering the book which 
 he held, he drew a chair up to the light, and read the 
 short, dry biography of his father printed on the page
 
 " ARRIVED SAFE ; WELL " 65 
 
 opposite the portrait. It summarized in a few hundred 
 words his father's life. He turned to the cover of the 
 book and read its title, "Year Book of the Great 
 Lakes," and a date of five years before ; then he looked 
 through it. It consisted in large part, he saw, merely 
 of lists of ships, their kind, their size, the date when 
 they were built, and their owners. Under this last head 
 he saw some score of times the name " Corvet, Sherrill 
 and Spearman." There was a separate list of engines 
 and boilers, and when they had been built and by whom. 
 There was a chronological table of events during the 
 year upon the lakes. Then he came to a part headed 
 " Disasters of the Year," and he read some of them ; 
 they were short accounts, drily and unfeelingly put, 
 but his blood thrilled to these stories of drowning, freez- 
 ing, blinded men struggling against storm and ice and 
 water, and conquering or being conquered by them. 
 Then he came to his father's picture and biography 
 once more and, with it, to pictures of other lakemen 
 and their biographies. He turned to the index and 
 looked for Sherrill's name, and then Spearman's ; find- 
 ing they were not in the book, he read some of the other 
 ones. 
 
 There was a strange similarity, he found, in these 
 biographies, among themselves as well as to that of his 
 father. These men had had, the most of them, no tra- 
 dition of seamanship, such as Sherrill had told him he 
 himself had had. They had been sons of lumbermen, 
 of farmers, of mill hands, miners, or fishermen. They 
 had been very young for the most part, when they had 
 heard and answered the call of the lakes the ever- 
 swelling, fierce demand of lumber, grain, and ore for 
 outlet; and they had lived hard; life had been violent,
 
 66 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 and raw, and brutal to them. They had sailed ships, 
 and built ships, and owned and lost them; they had 
 fought against nature and against man to keep their 
 ships, and to make them profitable, and to get more of 
 them. In the end a few, a very few comparatively, had 
 survived; by daring, by enterprise, by taking great 
 chances, they had thrust their heads above those of 
 their fellows; they had come to own a half dozen, a 
 dozen, perhaps a score of bottoms, and to have incomes 
 of fifty, of a hundred, of two hundred thousand dollars 
 a year. 
 
 Alan shut the book and sat thoughtful. He felt 
 strongly the immensity, the power, the grandeur of all 
 this; but he felt also its violence and its fierceness. 
 What might there not have been in the life of his father 
 who had fought up and made a way for himself through 
 such things? 
 
 The tall clock in the hall struck nine. He got up 
 and went out into the hall and asked for his hat and 
 coat. When they had been brought him, he put them 
 on and went out. 
 
 The snow had stopped some time before ; a strong and 
 increasing wind had sprung up, which Alan, with knowl- 
 edge of the wind across his prairies, recognized as an 
 aftermath of the greater storm that had produced it ; 
 for now the wind was from the opposite direction 
 from the west. He could see from the Sherrills' door- 
 step, when he looked toward the lighthouse at the har- 
 bor mouth winking red, white, red, white, at him, that 
 this offshore wind was causing some new commotion and 
 upheaval among the ice-floes; they groaned and la- 
 bored and fought against the opposing pressure of the 
 waves, under its urging.
 
 "ARRIVED SAFE; WELL" 67 
 
 He went down the steps and to the corner and turned 
 west to Astor Street. When he reached the house of 
 his father, he stopped under a street-lamp, looking up 
 at the big, stern old mansion questioningly. It had 
 taken on a different look for him since he had heard 
 Sherrill's account of his father ; there was an appeal to 
 him that made his throat grow tight, in its look of being 
 unoccupied, in the blank stare of its unlighted windows 
 which contrasted with the lighted windows in the houses 
 on both sides, and in the slight evidences of disrepair 
 about it. He waited many minutes, his hand upon the 
 key in his pocket; yet he could not go in, but instead 
 walked on down the street, his thoughts and feelings in 
 a turmoil.- 
 
 He could not call up any sense that the house was his, 
 any more than he had been able to when Sherrill had 
 told him of it. He own a house on that street! Yet 
 was that in itself any more remarkable than that he 
 should be the guest, the friend of such people as the 
 Sherrills? No one as yet, since Sherrill had told him 
 he was Corvet's son, had called him by name ; when they 
 did, what would they call him? Alan Conrad still? 
 Or Alan Corvet? 
 
 He noticed, up a street to the west, the lighted sign 
 of a drug store and turned up that way; he had 
 promised, he had recollected now, to write to ... 
 those in Kansas he could not call them " father " 
 and " mother " any more and tell them what he had 
 discovered as soon as he arrived. He could not tell 
 them that, but he could write them at least that he had 
 arrived safely and was well. He bought a postcard in 
 the drug store, and wrote just, "Arrived safely; am 
 well " to John Welton in Kansas. There was a little
 
 68 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 vending machine upon the counter, and he dropped in a 
 penny and got a box of matches and put them in his 
 pocket. 
 
 He mailed the card and turned back to Astor Street ; 
 and he walked more swiftly now, having come to his 
 decision, and only shot one quick look up at the house 
 as he approached it. With what had his father shut 
 himself up within that house for twenty years? And 
 was it there still? And was it from that that Benja- 
 min Corvet had fled? He saw no one in the street, and 
 was certain no one was observing him as, taking the key 
 from his pocket, he ran up the steps and unlocked the 
 outer door. Holding this door open to get the light 
 from the street lamp, he fitted the key into the inner 
 door; then he closed the outer door. For fully a 
 minute, with fast beating heart and a sense of expecta- 
 tion of he knew not what, he kept his hand upon the key 
 before he turned it ; then he opened the door and 
 stepped into the dark and silent house.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 
 
 ALAN, standing in the darkness of the hall, felt in 
 his pocket for his matches and struck one on the 
 box. The light showed the hall in front of him, 
 reaching back into some vague, distant darkness, and 
 great rooms with wide portiered doorways gaping on 
 both sides. He turned into the room upon his right, 
 glanced to see that the shades were drawn on the win- 
 dows toward the street, then found the switch and 
 turned on the electric light. 
 
 As he looked around, he fought against his excite- 
 ment and feeling of expectancy ; it was he told him- 
 self after all, merely a vacant house, though bigger 
 and more expensively furnished than any he ever had 
 been in except the Sherrills ; and SherrilPs statement to 
 him had implied that anything there might be in it which 
 could give the reason for his father's disappearance 
 would be probably only a paper, a record of some kind. 
 It was unlikely that a thing so easily concealed as that 
 could be found by him on his first examination of the 
 place; what he had come here for now he tried to 
 make himself believe was merely to obtain whatever 
 other information it could give him about his father and 
 the way his father had lived, before Sherrill and he had 
 any other conversation. 
 
 Alan had not noticed, when he stepped into the hall
 
 70 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 in the morning, whether the house then had been heated ; 
 now he appreciated that it was quite cold and, prob- 
 ably, had been cold for the three days since his father 
 had gone, and his servant had left to look for him. 
 Coming from the street, it was not the chilliness of the 
 house he felt but the stillness of the dead air; when a 
 house is heated, there is always some motion of the air, 
 but this air was stagnant. Alan had dropped his hat 
 on a chair in the hall ; he unbuttoned his overcoat but 
 kept it on, and stuffed his gloves into his pocket. 
 
 A light in a single room, he thought, would not excite 
 curiosity or attract attention from the neighbors or 
 any one passing in the street; but lights in more than 
 one room might do that. He resolved to turn off the 
 light in each room as he left it, before lighting the next 
 one. 
 
 It had been a pleasant as well as a handsome house, 
 if he could judge by the little of it he could see, before 
 the change had come over his father. The rooms were 
 large with high ceilings. The one where he stood, 
 obviously was a library; bookshelves reached three 
 quarters of the way to the ceiling on three of its walls 
 except where they were broken in two places by door- 
 ways, and in one place on the south wall by an open 
 fireplace. There was a big library table-desk in the 
 center of the room, and a stand with a shaded lamp 
 upon it nearer the fireplace. A leather-cushioned Mor- 
 ris chair a lonely, meditative-looking chair was by 
 the stand and at an angle toward the hearth; the rug 
 in front of it was quite worn through and showed the 
 floor underneath. A sympathy toward his father, 
 which Sherrill had not been able to make him feel, came 
 to Alan as he reflected how many days and nights Ben-
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 71 
 
 jamin Corvet must have passed reading or thinking in 
 that chair before his restless feet could have worn away 
 the tough, Oriental fabric of the rug. 
 
 There were several magazines on the top of the large 
 desk, some unwrapped, some still in their wrappers ; 
 Alan glanced at them and saw that they all related to 
 technical and scientific subjects. The desk evidently 
 had been much used and had many drawers ; Alan pulled 
 one open and saw that it was full of papers ; but his 
 sensation as he touched the top one made him shut the 
 drawer again and postpone prying of that sort until 
 he had looked more thoroughly about the house. 
 
 He went to the door of the connecting room and 
 looked into it. This room, dusky in spite of the light 
 which shone past him through the wide doorway, was 
 evidently another library ; or rather it appeared to have 
 been the original library, and the front room had been 
 converted into a library to supplement it. The book- 
 cases here were built so high that a little ladder on 
 wheels was required for access to the top shelves. Alan 
 located the light switch in the room ; then he returned, 
 switched off the light in the front room, crossed in the 
 darkness into the second room, and pressed the switch. 
 
 A weird, uncanny, half wail, half moan, coming from 
 the upper hall, suddenly filled the house. Its unexpect- 
 edness and the nature of the sound stirred the hair upon 
 his head, and he started back ; then he pressed the switch 
 again, and the noise stopped. He lighted another 
 match, found the right switch, and turned on the light. 
 Only after discovering two long tiers of white and black 
 keys against the north wall did Alan understand that 
 the switch must control the motor working the bellows 
 of an organ which had pipes in the upper hall ; it was
 
 72 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 the sort of organ that can be played either with fingers 
 or by means of a paper roll ; a book of music had fallen 
 upon the keys, so that one was pressed down, causing 
 the note to sound when the bellows pumped. 
 
 But having accounted for the sound did not immedi- 
 ately end the start that it had given Alan. He had the 
 feeling which so often comes to one in an unfamiliar 
 and vacant house that there was some one in the house 
 with him. He listened and seemed to hear another 
 sound in the upper hall, a footstep. He went out 
 quickly to the foot of the stairs and looked up them. 
 
 " Is any one here ? " he called. " Is any one here ? " 
 
 His voice brought no response. He went half way 
 up the curve of the wide stairway, and called again, 
 and listened; then he fought down the feeling he had 
 had; Sherrill had said there would be no one in the 
 house, and Alan was certain there was no one. So he 
 went back to the room where he had left the light. 
 
 The center of this room, like the room next to it, was 
 occupied by a library table-desk. He pulled open some 
 of the drawers in it; one or two had blue prints and 
 technical drawings in them; the others had only the 
 miscellany which accumulates in a room much used. 
 There were drawers also under the bookcases all around 
 the room ; they appeared, when Alan opened some of 
 them, to contain pamphlets of various societies, and the 
 scientific correspondence of which Sherrill had told him. 
 He looked over the titles of some of the books on the 
 shelves a multitude of subjects, anthropology, ex- 
 ploration, deep-sea fishing, ship-building, astronomy. 
 The books in each section of the shelves seemed to corre- 
 spond in subject with the pamphlets and correspond- 
 ence in the drawer beneath, and these, by their dates, to
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 78 
 
 divide themselves into different periods during the 
 twenty years that Benjamin Corvet had lived alone here. 
 
 Alan felt that seeing these things was bringing his 
 father closer to him ; they gave him a little of the feel- 
 ing he had been unable to get when he looked at his 
 father's picture. He could realize better now the 
 lonely, restless man, pursued by some ghost he could 
 not kill, taking up for distraction one subject of study 
 after another, exhausting each in turn until he could 
 no longer make it engross him, and then absorbing him- 
 self in the next. 
 
 These two rooms evidently had been the ones most 
 used by his father; the other rooms on this floor, as 
 Alan went into them one by one, he found spoke far less 
 intimately of Benjamin Corvet. A dining-room was in 
 the front of the house to the north side of the hall ; a 
 service room opened from it, and on the other side of the 
 service room was what appeared to be a smaller dining- 
 room. The service room communicated both by dumb 
 waiter and stairway with rooms below ; Alan went down 
 the stairway only far enough to see that the rooms 
 below were servants' quarters ; then he came back, 
 turned out the light on the first floor, struck another 
 match, and went up the stairs to the second story. 
 
 The rooms opening on to the upper hall, it was plain 
 to him, though their doors were closed, were mostly bed- 
 rooms. He put his hand at hazard on the nearest door 
 and opened it. As he caught the taste and smell of 
 the air in the room heavy, colder, and deader even 
 than the air in the rest of the house he hesitated ; 
 then with his match he found the light switch. 
 
 The room and the next one which communicated with 
 it evidently were or had been a woman's bedroom
 
 74 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 and boudoir. The hangings, which were still swaying 
 from the opening of the door, had taken permanently 
 the folds in which they had hung for many years ; there 
 were the scores of long-time idleness, not of use, in the 
 rugs and upholstery of the chairs. The bed, however, 
 was freshly made up, as though the bed clothing had 
 been changed occasionally. Alan went through the 
 bedroom to the door of the boudoir, and saw that that 
 too had the same look of unoccupancy and disuse. On 
 the low dressing table were scattered such articles as a 
 woman starting on a journey might think it not worth 
 while to take with her. There was no doubt that these 
 were the rooms of his father's wife. 
 
 Had his father preserved them thus, as she had left 
 them, in the hope that she might come back, permitting 
 himself to fix no time when he abandoned that hope, or 
 even to change them after he had learned that she was 
 dead? Alan thought not; Sherrill had said that Cor- 
 vet had known from the first that his separation from 
 his wife was permanent. The bed made up, the other 
 things neglected, and evidently looked after or dusted 
 only at long separated periods, looked more as though 
 Corvet had shrunk from seeing them or even thinking of 
 them, and had left them to be looked after wholly by the 
 servant, without ever being able to bring himself to give 
 instructions that they should be changed. Alan felt 
 that he would not be surprised to learn that his father 
 never had entered these ghostlike rooms since the day 
 his wife had left him. 
 
 On the top of a chest of high drawers in a corner 
 near the dressing table were some papers. Alan went 
 over to look at them ; they were invitations, notices of 
 concerts and of plays twenty years old the mail,
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 75 
 
 probably, of the morning she had gone away, left where 
 her maid or she herself had laid them, and only picked 
 up and put back there at the times since when the room 
 was dusted. As Alan touched them, he saw that his 
 fingers left marks in the dust on the smooth top of the 
 chest; he noticed that some one else had touched the 
 things and made marks of the same sort as he had made. 
 The freshness of these other marks startled him ; they 
 had been made within a day or so. They could not 
 have been made by Sherrill, for Alan had noticed that 
 Sherrill's hands were slender and delicately formed; 
 Corvet, too, was not a large man ; Alan's own hand was 
 of good size and powerful, but when he put his fingers 
 over the marks the other man had made, he found that 
 the other hand must have been larger and more power- 
 ful than his own. Had it been Corvet's servant? It 
 might have been, though the marks seemed too fresh 
 for that ; for the servant, Sherrill had said, had left the 
 day Corvet's disappearance was discovered. 
 
 Alan pulled open the drawers to see what the other 
 man might have been after. It had not been the serv- 
 ant ; for the contents of the drawers old brittle lace 
 and woman's clothing were tumbled as though they 
 had been pulled out and roughly and inexpertly pushed 
 back ; they still showed the folds in which they had lain 
 for years and which recently had been disarranged. 
 
 This proof that some one had been prying about in the 
 house before himself and since Corvet had gone, startled 
 Alan and angered him. It brought him suddenly a 
 sense of possession which he had not been able to feel 
 when Sherrill had told him the house was his ; it brought 
 an impulse of protection of these things about him. 
 Who had been searching in Benjamin Corvet's in
 
 76 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Alan's house? He pushed the drawers shut hastily and 
 hurried across the hall to the room opposite. In this 
 room plainly Benjamin Corvet's bedroom were no 
 signs of intrusion. He went to the door of the room 
 connecting with it, turned on the light, and looked in. 
 It was a smaller room than the others and contained a 
 roll-top desk and a cabinet. The cover of the desk was 
 closed, and the drawers of the cabinet were shut and 
 apparently undisturbed. Alan recognized that prob- 
 ably in this ropm he would find the most intimate and 
 personal things relating to his father ; but before exam- 
 ining it, he turned back to inspect the bedroom. \ ' 
 
 It was a carefully arranged and well-cared-for room, 
 plainly in constant use. A reading stand, with a lamp, 
 was beside the bed with a book marked about the middle. 
 On the dresser were hair-brushes and a comb, and a box 
 of razors, none of which were missing. When Benjamin 
 Corvet had gone away, he had not taken anything with 
 him, even toilet articles. With the other things on the 
 dresser, was a silver frame for a photograph with a 
 cover closed and fastened over the portrait; as Alan 
 took it up and opened it, the stiffness of the hinges and 
 the edges of the lid gummed to the frame by disuse, 
 showed that it was long since it had been opened. The 
 picture was of a woman of perhaps thirty a beauti- 
 ful woman, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a refined, sensi- 
 tive, spiritual-looking face. The dress she wore was 
 the same, Alan suddenly recognized, which he had seen 
 and touched among the things in the chest of drawers ; 
 it gave him a queer feeling now to have touched her 
 things. He felt instinctively, as he held the picture 
 and studied it, that it could have been no vulgar bicker- 
 ing between wife and husband, nor any caprice of a
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 77 
 
 dissatisfied woman, that had made her separate her- 
 self from her husband. The photographer's name was 
 stamped in one corner, and the date 1894, the year 
 after Alan had been born. 
 
 But Alan felt that the picture and the condition of 
 her rooms across the hall did not shed any light on the 
 relations between her and Benjamin Corvet; rather they 
 obscured them ; for his father neither had put the pic- 
 ture away from him and devoted her rooms to other 
 uses, nor had he kept the rooms arranged and ready 
 for her return and her picture so that he would see it. 
 He would have done one or the other of these things, 
 Alan thought, if it were she his father had wronged 
 or, at least, if it were only she. 
 
 Alan reclosed the case, and put the picture down; 
 then he went into the room with the desk. He tried 
 the cover of the desk, but it appeared to be locked; 
 after looking around vainly for a key, he tried again, 
 exerting a little more force, and this time the top went 
 up easily, tearing away the metal plate into which the 
 claws of the lock clasped and the two long screws which 
 had held it. He examined the lock, surprised, and saw 
 that the screws must have been merely set into the holes ; 
 scars showed where a chisel or some metal implement 
 had been thrust in under the top to force it up. The 
 pigeonholes and little drawers in the upper part of the 
 desk, as he swiftly opened them, he found entirely 
 empty. He hurried to the cabinet ; the drawers of the 
 cabinet too had been forced, and very recently ; for the 
 scars and the splinters of wood were clean and fresh. 
 These drawers and the drawers in the lower part of the 
 desk either were empty, or the papers in them had been 
 disarranged and tumbled in confusion, as though some
 
 78 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 one had examined them hastily and tossed them back. 
 
 Sherrill had not done that, nor any one who had a 
 business to be there. If Benjamin Corvet had emptied 
 some of those drawers before he went away, he would 
 not have relocked empty drawers. To Alan, the marks 
 of violence and roughness were unmistakably the work 
 of the man with the big hands who had left marks upon 
 the top of the chest of drawers ; and the feeling that he 
 had been in the house very recently was stronger than 
 ever. 
 
 Alan ran out into the hall and listened ; he heard no 
 sound ; but he went back to the little room more excited 
 than before. For what had the other man been search- 
 ing? For the same things which Alan was looking for? 
 And had the other man got them? Who might the 
 other be, and what might be his connection with Benja- 
 min Corvet? Alan had no doubt that everything of 
 importance must have been taken away, but he would 
 make sure of that. He took some of the papers from 
 the drawers and began to examine them ; after nearly an 
 hour of this, he had found only one article which ap- 
 peared connected in any way with what Sherrill had 
 told him or with Alan himself. In one of the little 
 drawers of the desk he found several books, much worn 
 as though from being carried in a pocket, and one of 
 these contained a series of entries stretching over several 
 years. These listed an amount $150. opposite a 
 series of dates with only the year and the month given, 
 and there was an entry for every second month. 
 
 Alan felt his fingers trembling as he turned the pages 
 of the little book and found at the end of the list a 
 blank, and below, in the same hand but in writing which 
 had changed slightly with the passage of years, another
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 79 
 
 date and the confirming entry of $1,500. The other 
 papers and books were only such things as might ac- 
 cumulate during a lifetime on the water and in business 
 government certificates, manifests, boat schedules of 
 times long gone by, and similar papers. Alan looked 
 through the little book again and put it in his pocket. 
 It was, beyond doubt, his father's memorandum of the 
 sums sent to Blue Rapids for Alan ; it told him that 
 here he had been in his father's thoughts ; in this little 
 room, within a few steps from those deserted apart- 
 ments of his wife, Benjamin Corvet had sent "Alan's 
 dollar" that dollar which had been such a subject 
 of speculation in his childhood for himself and for all 
 the other children. He grew warm at the thought as 
 he began putting the other things back into the draw- 
 ers. 
 
 He started and straightened suddenly; then he lis- 
 tened attentively, and his skin, warm an instant before, 
 turned cold and prickled. Somewhere within the house, 
 unmistakably on the floor below him, a door had 
 slammed. The wind, which had grown much stronger 
 in the last hour, was battering the windows and whining 
 round the corners of the building; but the house was 
 tightly closed; it could not be the wind that had blown 
 the door shut. Some one it was beyond question 
 now, for the realization was quite different from the 
 feeling he had had about that before was in the 
 house with him. Had his father's servant come back? 
 That was impossible ; Sherrill had received a wire from 
 the man that day, and he could not get back to Chicago 
 before the following morning at the earliest. But the 
 servant, Sherrill had said, was the only other one be- 
 sides his father who had a key. Was it ... his
 
 80 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 father who had come back? That, though not impos- 
 sible, seemed improbable. 
 
 Alan stooped quickly, unlaced and stripped off his 
 shoes, and ran out into the hall to the head of the 
 stairs where he looked down and listened. From here 
 the sound of some one moving about came to him dis- 
 tinctly; he could see no light below, but when he ran 
 down to the turn of the stairs, it became plain that 
 there was a very dim and flickering light in the library. 
 He crept on farther down the staircase. His hands 
 were cold and moist from his excitement, and his body 
 was hot and trembling. 
 
 Whoever it was that was moving about down-stairs, 
 even if he was not one who had a right to be there, at 
 least felt secure from interruption. He was going 
 with heavy step from window to window; where he 
 found a shade up, he pulled it down brusquely and with 
 a violence which suggested great strength under a 
 nervous strain; a shade, which had been pulled down, 
 flew up, and the man damned it as though it had 
 startled him; then, after an instant, he pulled it down 
 again. 
 
 Alan crept still farther down and at last caught 
 sight of him. The man was not his father ; he was not 
 a servant; it was equally sure at the same time that 
 he was not any one who had any business to be in 
 the house and that he was not any common house- 
 breaker. 
 
 He was a big, young-looking man, with broad shoul- 
 ders and very evident vigor; Alan guessed his age at 
 thirty-five ; he. was handsome he had a straight fore- 
 head over daring, deep-set eyes ; his nose, lips, and chin 
 were powerfully formed; and he was expensively and
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 81 
 
 very carefully dressed. The light by which Alan saw 
 these things came from a flat little pocket searchlight 
 that the man carried in one hand, which threw a little 
 brilliant circle of light as he directed it; and now, as 
 the light chanced to fall on his other hand powerful 
 and heavily muscled Alan recollected the look and 
 size of the finger prints on the chest of drawers up- 
 stairs. He did not doubt that this was the same man 
 who had gone through the desk ; but since he had al- 
 ready rifled the desks, what did he want here now? As 
 the man moved out of sight, Alan crept on down as far 
 as the door to the library; the man had gone on into 
 the rear room, and Alan went far enough into the 
 library so he could see him. 
 
 He had pulled open one of the drawers in the big 
 table in the rear room the room where the organ 
 was and where the bookshelves reached to the ceiling 
 and with his light held so as to show what was in it, 
 he was tumbling over its contents and examining them. 
 He went through one after another of the drawers of 
 the table like this ; after examining them, he rose and 
 kicked the last one shut disgustedly; he stood looking 
 about the room questioningly, then he started toward 
 the front room. 
 
 He cast the light of his torch ahead of him ; but Alan 
 had time to anticipate his action and to retreat to the 
 hall. He held the hangings a little way from the door 
 jamb so he could see into the room. If this man were 
 the same who had looted the desk up-stairs, it was plain 
 that he had not procured there what he wanted or all 
 of what he wanted ; and now he did not know where next 
 to look. 
 
 He had, as yet, neither seen nor heard anything to
 
 82 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 alarm him, and as he went to the desk in the front room 
 and peered impatiently into the drawers, he slammed 
 them shut, one after another. He straightened and 
 stared about. "Damn Ben! Damn Ben!" he ejacu- 
 lated violently and returned to the rear room. Alan, 
 again following him, found him on his knees in front 
 of one of the drawers under the bookcases. As he con- 
 tinued searching through the drawers, his irritation 
 became greater and greater. He jerked one drawer 
 entirely out of its case, and the contents flew in every 
 direction ; swearing at it, and damning " Ben " again, 
 he gathered up the letters. One suddenly caught his 
 attention ; he began reading it closely, then snapped it 
 back into the drawer, crammed the rest on top of it, 
 and went on to the next of the files. He searched in 
 this manner through half a dozen drawers, plainly find- 
 ing nothing at all he wanted ; he dragged some of the 
 books from their cases, felt behind them and shoved 
 back some of the books but dropped others on the floor 
 and blasphemy burst from him. 
 
 He cursed " Ben " again and again, and himself, and 
 God ; he damned men by name, but so violently and 
 incoherently that Alan could not make out the names ; 
 terribly he swore at men living and men " rotting in 
 Hell." The beam of light from the torch in his hand 
 swayed aside and back and forth. Without warning, 
 suddenly it caught Alan as he stood in the dark of the 
 front room ; and as the dim white circle of light gleamed 
 into Alan's face, the man looked that way and saw 
 him. 
 
 The effect of this upon the man was so strange and 
 so bewildering to Alan that Alan could only stare at 
 him. The big man seemed to shrink into himself and
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 8S 
 
 to shrink back and away from Alan. He roared out 
 something in a bellow thick with fear and horror; he 
 seemed to choke with terror. There was nothing in 
 his look akin to mere, surprise or alarm at realizing 
 that another was there and had been seeing and over- 
 hearing him. The light which he still gripped swayed 
 back and forth and showed him Alan again, and he 
 raised his arm before his face as he recoiled. 
 
 The consternation of the man was so complete that 
 it checked Alan's rush toward him ; he halted, then ad- 
 vanced silently and watchfully. As he went forward, 
 and the light shone upon his face again, the big man 
 cried out hoarsely: 
 
 ".Damn you damn you, with the hole above your 
 eye ! The bullet got you ! And now you've got Ben ! 
 But you can't get me! Go back to Hell! You can't 
 get me! I'll get you I'll get you! You can't 
 save the Miwaka! " 
 
 He drew back his arm and with all his might hurled 
 the flashlight at Alan. It missed and crashed some- 
 where behind him, but did not go out; the beam of 
 light shot back and wavered and flickered over both of 
 them, as the torch rolled on the floor. Alan rushed 
 forward and, thrusting through the dark, his hand 
 struck the man's chest and seized his coat. 
 
 The man caught at and seized Alan's arm ; he seemed 
 to feel of it and assure himself of its reality. 
 
 "Flesh! Flesh!" he roared in relief; and his big 
 arms grappled Alan. As they struggled, they 
 stumbled and fell to the floor, the big man underneath. 
 His hand shifted its hold and caught Alan's throat ; 
 Alan got an arm free and, with all his force, struck the 
 man's face. The man struck back a heavy blow on
 
 84 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 the side of Alan's head which dizzied him but left him 
 strength to strike again, and his knuckles reached the 
 man's face once more, but he got another heavy blow 
 in return. The man was grappling no longer; he 
 swung Alan to one side and off of him, and rolled him- 
 self away. He scrambled to his feet and dashed out 
 through the library, across the hall, and into the 
 service room. Alan heard his feet clattering down the 
 stairway to the floor beneath. Alan got to his feet; 
 dizzied and not yet familiar with the house, he blun- 
 dered against a wall and had to feel his way along it to 
 the service room ; as he slipped and stumbled down the 
 stairway, a door closed loudly at the end of the corri- 
 dor he had seen at the foot of the stairs. He ran 
 along the corridor to the door; it had closed with a 
 spring lock, and seconds passed while he felt in the 
 dark for the catch ; he found it and tore the door open, 
 and came out suddenly into the cold air of the night in 
 a paved passageway beside the house which led in one 
 direction to the street and in the other to a gate open- 
 ing on the alley. He ran forward to the street and 
 looked up and down, but found it empty ; then he ran 
 back to the alley. At the end of the alley, where it 
 intersected the cross street, the figure of the man run- 
 ning away appeared suddenly out of the shadows, then 
 disappeared ; Alan, following as far as the street, could 
 see nothing more of him ; this street too was empty. 
 
 He ran a little farther and looked, then he went back 
 to the house. The side door had swung shut again and 
 latched. He felt in his pocket for his key and went 
 around to the front door. The snow upon the steps 
 had been swept away, probably by the servant who had 
 come to the house earlier in the day with Constant
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 85 
 
 Sherrill, but some had fallen since ; the footsteps made 
 in the early afternoon had been obliterated by it, but 
 Alan could see those he had made that evening, and the 
 marks where some one else had gone into the house and 
 not come out again. In part it was plain, therefore, 
 what had happened : the man had come from the south, 
 for he had not seen the light Alan had had in the north 
 and rear part of the house; believing no one was in the 
 house, the man had gone in through the front door with 
 a key. He had been some one familiar with the house ; 
 for he had known about the side door and how to reach 
 it and that he could get out that way. This might 
 mean no more than that he was the same who had 
 searched through the house before ; but at least it made 
 his identity with the former intruder more certain. 
 
 Alan let himself in at the front door and turned on 
 the light in the reading lamp in the library. The elec- 
 tric torch still was burning on the floor and he picked 
 it up and extinguished it; he went up-stairs and 
 brought down his shoes. He had seen a wood fire set 
 ready for lighting in the library, and now he lighted 
 it and sat before it drying his wet socks before he put 
 on his shoes. He was still shaking and breathing fast 
 from his struggle with the man and his chase after him, 
 and by the strangeness of what had taken place. 
 
 When the shaft of light from the torch had flashed 
 across Alan's face in the dark library, the man had not 
 taken him for what he was a living person ; he had 
 taken him for a specter. His terror and the things he 
 had cried out could mean only that. The specter of 
 whom ? Not of Ben j amin Corvet ; for one of the things 
 Alan had remarked when he saw Benjamin Corvet's pic- 
 ture was that he himself did not look at all like his
 
 86 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 father. Besides, what the man had said made it cer- 
 tain that he did not think the specter was " Ben " ; for 
 the specter had ** got Ben." Did Alan look like some 
 one else, then? Like whom? Evidently like the man 
 
 now dead for he had a ghost who had " got " 
 Ben, in the big man's opinion. Who could that be? 
 
 No answer, as yet, was possible to that. But if he 
 did look like some one, then that some one was or 
 had been dreaded not only by the big man who had 
 entered the house, but by Benjamin Corvet as well. 
 "You got Ben!" the man had cried out. Got him? 
 How? " But you can't get me ! " he had said. " You 
 
 with the bullet hole above your eye!" What did 
 that mean? 
 
 Alan got up and went to look at himself in the mir- 
 ror he had seen in the hall. He was white, now that 
 the flush of the fighting was going; he probably had 
 been pale before with excitement, and over his right 
 eye there was a round, black mark. Alan looked down 
 at his hands ; a little skin was off one knuckle, where 
 he had struck the man, and his fingers were smudged 
 with a black and sooty dust. He had smudged them 
 on the papers up-stairs or else in feeling his way about 
 the dark house, and at some time he had touched his 
 forehead and left the black mark. That had been the 
 " bullet hole." 
 
 The rest that the man had said had been a reference 
 to some name; Alan had no trouble to recollect the 
 name and, while he did not understand it at all, it 
 stirred him queerly " the MiwaTca" What was 
 that? The queer excitement and questioning that the 
 name brought, when he repeated it to himself, was not 
 recollection ; for he could not recall ever having heard
 
 J 
 AN ENCOUNTER 87 
 
 the name before ; but it was not completely strange to 
 him. He could define the excitement it stirred only in 
 that way. 
 
 He went back to the Morris chair; his socks were 
 nearly dry, and he put on his shoes. He got up and 
 paced about. Sherrill had believed that here in this 
 house Benjamin Corvet had left or might have left 
 a memorandum, a record, or an account of some 
 sort which would explain to Alan, his son, the blight 
 which had hung over his life. Sherrill had said that it 
 could have been no mere intrigue, no vulgar personal 
 sin; and the events of the night had made that very 
 certain; for, plainly, whatever was hidden in that 
 house involved some one else seriously, desperately. 
 There was no other way to explain the intrusion of the 
 sort of man whom Alan had surprised there an hour 
 ago. 
 
 The fact that this other man searched also did not 
 prove that Benjamin Corvet had left a record in the 
 house, as Sherrill believed ; but it certainly showed that 
 another person believed or feared it. Whether 
 or not guilt had sent Benjamin Corvet away four days 
 ago, whether or not there had been guilt behind the 
 ghost which had " got Ben," there was guilt in the big 
 man's superstitious terror when he had seen Alan. A 
 bold, powerful man like that one, when his conscience 
 is clear, does not see a ghost. And the ghost which he 
 had seen had a bullet hole above the brows ! 
 
 Alan did not flatter himself that in any physical 
 sense he had triumphed over that man ; so far as it had 
 gone, his adversary had had rather the better of the 
 battle ; he had endeavored to stun Alan, or perhaps do 
 worse than stun; but after the first grapple, his pur-
 
 88 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 pose had been to get away. But he had not fled from 
 Alan ; he had fled from discovery of who he was. Sher- 
 rill had told Alan of no one whom he could identify 
 with this man ; but Alan could describe him to Sherrill. 
 
 Alan found a lavatory and washed and straightened 
 his collar and tie and brushed his clothes. There was 
 a bruise on the side of his head ; but though it throbbed 
 painfully, it did not leave any visible mark. He could 
 return now to the Sherrills'. It was not quite mid- 
 night but he believed by this time Sherrill was probably 
 home ; perhaps already he had gone to bed. Alan took 
 up his hat and looked about the house ; he was going to 
 return and sleep here, of course ; he was not going to 
 leave the house unguarded for any long time after this ; 
 but, after what had just happened, he felt he could 
 leave it safely for half an hour, particularly if he left 
 a light burning within. 
 
 He did this and stepped out. The wind from the 
 west was blowing hard, and the night had become bitter 
 cold ; yet, as Alan reached the drive, he could see far 
 out the tossing lights of a ship and, as he went toward 
 the Sherrills', he gazed out over the roaring water. 
 Often on nights like this, he knew, his father must have 
 been battling such water. 
 
 The man who answered his ring at the Sherrills* 
 recognized him at once and admitted him; in reply to 
 Alan's question, the servant said that Mr. Sherrill had 
 not yet returned. When Alan went to his room, the 
 valet appeared and, finding that Alan was packing, the 
 man offered his service. Alan let him pack and went 
 down-stairs; a motor had just driven up to the house. 
 
 It proved to have brought Constance and her 
 mother; Mrs. Sherrill, after informing Alan that Mr.
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 89 
 
 Sherrill might not return until some time later, went 
 up-stairs and did not appear again. Constance fol- 
 lowed her mother but, ten minutes later came down- 
 stairs. 
 
 " You're not staying here to-night ? " she said. 
 
 " I wanted to say to your father," Alan explained, 
 " that I believe I had better go over to the other 
 house." 
 
 She came a little closer to him in her concern. 
 " Nothing has happened here? " 
 
 "Here? You mean in this house?" Alan smiled. 
 "No; nothing." 
 
 She seemed relieved. Alan, remembering her 
 mother's manner, thought he understood; she knew 
 that remarks had been made, possibly, which repeated 
 by a servant might have offended him. 
 
 " I'm afraid it's been a hard day for you," she said. 
 
 " It's certainly been unusual," Alan admitted. 
 
 It had been a hard day for her, too, he observed ; or 
 probably the recent days, since her father's and her 
 own good friend had gone, had been trying. She was 
 tired now and nervously excited ; but she was so young 
 that the little signs of strain and worry, instead of 
 making her seem older, only made her youth more ap- 
 parent. The curves of her neck and her pretty, 
 rounded shoulders were as soft as before; her lustrous, 
 brown hair was more beautiful, and a slight flush col- 
 ored her clear skin. 
 
 It had seemed to Alan, when Mrs. Sherrill had 
 spoken to him a few minutes before, that her manner 
 toward him had been more reserved and constrained 
 than earlier in the evening; and he had put that down 
 to the lateness of the hour ; but now he realized that she
 
 90 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 probably had been discussing him with Constance, and 
 that it was somewhat in defiance of her mother that 
 Constance had come down to speak with him again. 
 
 " Are you taking any one over to the other house 
 with you ? " she inquired. 
 
 " Any one ? " 
 
 " A servant, I mean." 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then you'll let us lend you a man from here." 
 
 "You're awfully good; but I don't think I'll need 
 any one to-night. Mr. Corvet's my father's man 
 is coming back to-morrow, I understand. I'll get 
 along very well until then." 
 
 She was silent a moment as she looked away. Her 
 shoulders suddenly jerked a little. " I wish you'd take 
 some one with you," she persisted. " I don't like to 
 think of you alone over there." 
 
 " My father must have been often alone there." 
 
 "Yes," she said. "Yes." She looked at him 
 quickly, then away, checking a question. She wanted 
 to ask, he knew, what he had discovered in that lonely 
 house which had so agitated him ; for of course she had 
 noticed agitation in him. And he had intended to tell 
 her or, rather, her father. He had been rehearsing to 
 himself the description of the man he had met there in 
 order to ask Sherrill about him ; but now Alan knew 
 that he was not going to refer the matter even to Sher- 
 rill just yet. 
 
 Sherrill had believed that Benjamin Corvet's disap- 
 pearance was from circumstances too personal and 
 intimate to be made a subject of public inquiry; and 
 what Alan had encountered in Corvet's house had con- 
 firmed that belief. Sherrill further had said that
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 91 
 
 Benjamin Corvet, if he had wished Sherrill to know 
 those circumstances, would have told them to him; but 
 Corvet had not done that; instead, he had sent for 
 Alan, his son. He had given his son his confidence. 
 
 Sherrill had admitted that he was withholding from 
 Alan, for the time being, something that he knew about 
 Benjamin Corvet; it was nothing, he had said, which 
 would help Alan to learn about his father, or what had 
 become of him ; but perhaps Sherrill, not knowing these 
 other things, could not speak accurately as to that. 
 Alan determined to ask Sherrill what he had been with- 
 holding before he told him all of what had happened in 
 Corvet's house. There was one other circumstance 
 which Sherrill had mentioned but not explained; it 
 occurred to Alan now. 
 
 " Miss Sherrill " he checked himself. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " This afternoon your father said that you believed 
 that Mr. Corvet's disappearance was in some way con- 
 nected with you ; he said that he did not think that was 
 so; but do you want to tell me why you thought it? " 
 
 "Yes; I will tell you." She colored quickly. 
 " One of the last things Mr. Corvet did in fact, the 
 last thing we know of his doing before he sent for you 
 was to come to me and warn me against one of my 
 friends." 
 
 "Warn you, Miss Sherrill? How? I mean, warn 
 you against what?" 
 
 "Against thinking too much of him." She turned 
 away. 
 
 Alan saw in the rear of the hall the man who had 
 been waiting with the suitcase. It was after midnight 
 now and, for far more than the intended half hour,
 
 92 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Alan had left his father's house unwatched, to be en- 
 tered by the front door whenever the man, who had 
 entered it before, returned with his key. 
 
 " I think I'll come to see your father in the morning," 
 Alan said, when Constance looked back to him. 
 
 "You won't borrow Simons?" she asked again. 
 
 " Thank you, no." 
 
 " But you'll come over here for breakfast in the 
 morning? " 
 
 " You want me? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " I'd like to come very much." 
 
 " Then I'll expect you." She followed him to the 
 door when he had put on his things, and he made no 
 objection when she asked that the man be allowed to 
 carry his bag around to the other house. When he 
 glanced back, after reaching the walk, he saw her 
 standing inside the door, watching through the glass 
 after him. 
 
 When he had dismissed Simons and reentered the 
 house on Astor Street, he found no evidences of any 
 disturbance while he had been gone. On the second 
 floor, to the east of the room which had been his 
 father's, was a bedroom which evidently had been kept 
 as a guest chamber ; Alan carried his suitcase there and 
 made ready for bed. 
 
 The sight of Constance Sherrill standing and watch- 
 ing after him in concern as he started back to this 
 house, came to him again and again and, also, her 
 flush when she had spoken of the friend against whom 
 Benjamin Corvet had warned her. Who was he? It 
 had been impossible at that moment for Alan to ask her 
 more; besides, if he had asked and she had told him,
 
 AN ENCOUNTER 93 
 
 he would have learned only a name which he could not 
 place yet in any connection with her or with Benjamin 
 Corvet. Whoever he was, it was plain that Constance 
 Sherrill " thought of him " ; lucky man, Alan said to 
 himself. Yet Corvet had warned her not to think of 
 him. . . . 
 
 Alan turned back his bed. It had been for him a 
 tremendous day. Barely twelve hours before he had 
 come to that house, Alan Conrad from Blue Rapids, 
 Kansas ; now ... phrases from what Lawrence Sher- 
 rill had told him of his father were running through 
 his mind as he opened the door of the room to be able 
 to hear any noise in Benjamin Corvet's house, of which 
 he was sole protector. The emotion roused by his 
 first sight of the lake went through him again as he 
 opened the window to the east. 
 
 Now he was in bed he seemed to be standing, a 
 specter before a man blaspheming Benjamin Corvet 
 and the souls of men dead. " And the hole above the 
 eye ! . . . The bullet got you ! ... So it's you that 
 got Ben ! . . . I'll get you ! . . . You can't save the 
 Miwaka! " 
 
 The Miiealca! The stir of that name was stronger 
 now even than before ; it had been running through his 
 consciousness almost constantly since he had heard it. 
 He jumped up and turned on the light and found a 
 pencil. He did not know how to spell the name and 
 it was not necessary to write it down; the name had 
 taken on that definiteness and ineffaceableness of a 
 thing which, once heard, can never again be forgotten. 
 But, in panic that he might forget, he wrote it, guess- 
 ing at the spelling " Miwaka." 
 
 It was a name, of course; but the name of what? It
 
 94 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 repeated and repeated itself to him, after he got back 
 into bed, until its very iteration made him drowsy. 
 
 Outside the gale whistled and shrieked. The wind, 
 passing its last resistance after its sweep across the 
 prairies before it leaped upon the lake, battered and 
 clamored in its assault about the house. But as Alan 
 became sleepier, he heard it no longer as it rattled the 
 windows and howled under the eaves and over the roof, 
 but as out on the lake, above the roaring and ice- 
 crunching waves, it whipped and circled with its chill 
 the ice-shrouded sides of struggling ships. So, with 
 the roar of surf and gale in his ears, he went to sleep 
 with the sole conscious connection in his mind between 
 himself and these people, among whom Benjamin Cor- 
 vet's summons had brought him, the one name 
 " Miwaka."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 CONSTANCE SHERRILL 
 
 IN the morning a great change had come over the 
 lake. The wind still blew freshly, but no longer 
 fiercely, from the west ; and now, from before the 
 beach beyond the drive, and from the piers and break- 
 waters at the harbor mouth, and from all the western 
 shore, the ice had departed. Far out, a nearly indis- 
 cernible white line marked the ice-floe where it was 
 traveling eastward before the wind ; nearer, and with 
 only a gleaming crystal fringe of frozen snow clinging 
 to the shore edge, the water sparkled, blue and dim- 
 pling, under the morning sun ; multitudes of gulls, 
 hungry after the storm, called to one another and 
 circled over the breakwaters, the piers, and out over 
 the water as far as the eye could see ; and a half mile 
 off shore, a little work boat a shallop twenty feet 
 long was put-put-ing on some errand along a path 
 where twelve hours before no horsepower creatable by 
 man could have driven the hugest steamer. 
 
 Constance Sherrill, awakened by the sunlight re- 
 flected from the water upon her ceiling, found nothing 
 odd or startling in this change ; it roused her but did 
 not surprise her. Except for the short periods of her 
 visits away from Chicago, she had lived all her life on 
 the shore of the lake ^ the water wonderful, ever
 
 96 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 altering was the first sight each morning. As it 
 made wilder and more grim the desolation of a stormy 
 day, so it made brighter and more smiling the splendor 
 of the sunshine and, by that much more, influenced one's 
 feelings. 
 
 Constance held by preference to the seagoing tra- 
 ditions of her family. Since she was a child, the lake 
 and the life of the ships had delighted and fascinated 
 her; very early she had discovered that, upon the lake, 
 she was permitted privileges sternly denied upon land 
 an arbitrary distinction which led her to designate 
 water, when she was a little girl, as her family's 
 " respectable element." For while her father's invest- 
 ments were, in part, on the water, her mother's prop- 
 erty all was on the land. Her mother, who was a 
 Seaton, owned property somewhere in the city, in com- 
 mon with Constance's uncles; this property consisted, 
 as Constance succeeded in ascertaining about the time 
 she was nine, of large, wholesale grocery buildings. 
 They and the " brand " had been in the possession of 
 the Seaton family for many years; both Constance's 
 uncles worked in the big buildings where the canning 
 was done; and, when Constance was taken to visit 
 them, she found the place most interesting the ber- 
 ries and fruit coming up in great steaming cauldrons ; 
 the machines pushing the cans under the enormous 
 faucets where the preserves ran out and then sealing 
 the cans and pasting the bright Seaton " brand " about 
 them. The people there were interesting the girls 
 with flying fingers sorting fruit, and the men pounding 
 the big boxes together; and the great shaggy-hoofed 
 horses which pulled the huge, groaning wagons were 
 most fascinating. She wanted to ride on one of the
 
 CONSTANCE SHERRILL 9T 
 
 wagons ; but her request was promptly and completely 
 squashed. 
 
 It was not " done " ; nor was anything about the 
 groceries and the canning to be mentioned before vis- 
 itors; Constance brought up the subject once and 
 found out. It was different about her father's ships. 
 She could talk about them when she wanted to; and 
 her father often spoke of them ; and any one who came 
 to the house could speak about them. Ships, appar- 
 ently, were respectable. 
 
 When she went down to the docks with her father, 
 she could climb all over them, if she was only careful of 
 her clothes; she could spend a day watching one of 
 her father's boats discharging grain or another un- 
 loading ore; and, when she was twelve, for a great 
 treat, her father took her on one of the freighters to 
 Duluth ; and for one delightful, wonderful week she 
 chummed with the captain and mates and wheelmen and 
 learned all the pilot signals and the way the different 
 lighthouses winked. 
 
 Mr. Spearman, who recently had become a partner of 
 her father's, was also on the boat upon that trip. He 
 had no particular duty ; he was just " an owner" like her 
 father ; but Constance observed that, while the captain 
 and the mates and the engineers were always polite and 
 respectful to her father, they asked Mr. Spearman's 
 opinion about things in a very different way and paid 
 real attention not merely polite attention when 
 he talked. He was a most desirable sort of acqui- 
 sition ; for he was a friend who could come to the house 
 at any time, and yet he, himself, had done all sorts of 
 exciting things. He had not just gone to Harvard 
 and then become an owner, as Constance's father had ;
 
 98 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 at fifteen, he had run away from his father's farm back 
 from the east shore of little Traverse Bay near the 
 northern end of Lake Michigan. At eighteen, after 
 all sorts of adventures, he had become mate of a lum- 
 ber schooner ; he had " taken to steam " shortly after 
 that and had been an officer upon many kinds of ships. 
 Then Uncle Benny had taken him into partnership. 
 Constance had a most exciting example of what he 
 could do when the ship ran into a big storm on Lake 
 Superior. 
 
 Coming into Whitefish Bay, a barge had blundered 
 against the vessel; a seam started, and water came in 
 so fast that it gained on the pumps. Instantly, Mr. 
 Spearman, not the captain, was in command and, from 
 the way he steered the ship to protect the seam and 
 from the scheme he devised to stay the inrush of 
 water, the pumps began to gain at once, and the ship 
 went into Duluth safe and dry. Constance liked that 
 in a man of the sort whom people knew. For, as the 
 most active partner though not the chief stock- 
 holder of Corvet, Sherrill and Spearman, almost 
 every one in the city knew him. He had his bachelor 
 " rooms " in one of the newest and most fashionable 
 of the apartment buildings facing the lake just north 
 of the downtown city ; he had become a member of the 
 best city and country clubs; and he was welcomed 
 quickly along the Drive, where the Sherrills' mansion 
 was coming to be considered a characteristic " old " 
 Chicago home. 
 
 But little over forty, and appearing even younger, 
 Spearman was distinctly of the new generation; and 
 Constance Sherrill was only one of many of the 
 younger girls who found in Henry Spearman refreshing
 
 CONSTANCE SHERRILL 99 
 
 relief from the youths who were the sons of men but 
 who could never become men themselves. They were 
 nice, earnest boys with all sorts of serious Marxian 
 ideas of establishing social justice in the plants which 
 their fathers had built; and carrying the highest mo- 
 tives into the city or national politics. But the indus- 
 trial reformers, Constance was quite certain, never 
 could have built up the industries with which they now, 
 so superiorly, were finding fault ; the political purifiers 
 either failed of election or, if elected, seemed to leave 
 politics pretty much as they had been before. The 
 picture of Spearman, instantly appealed to and in- 
 stantly in charge in the emergency, remained and 
 became more vivid within Constance, because she never 
 saw him except when he dominated. 
 
 And a decade most amazingly had bridged the abyss 
 which had separated twelve years and thirty-two. At 
 twenty-two, Constance Sherrill was finding Henry 
 Spearman age forty-two the most vitalizing and 
 interesting of the men who moved, socially, about the 
 restricted ellipse which curved down the lake shore south 
 of the park and up Astor Street. He had, very early, 
 recognized that he possessed the vigor and courage to 
 carry him far, and he had disciplined himself until the 
 coarseness and roughness, which had sometimes of- 
 fended the little girl of ten years before, had almost 
 vanished. What crudities still came out, romantically 
 reminded of his hard, early life on the lakes. Had 
 there been anything in that life of his of which he had 
 not told her something worse than merely rough and 
 rugged, which could strike at her? Uncle Benny's last, 
 dramatic appeal to her had suggested that; but even 
 at the moment when he was talking to her, fright for
 
 100 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Uncle Benny not dread that there had been anything 
 wrong in Henry's life had most moved her. Uncle 
 Benny very evidently was not himself. As long as 
 Constance could remember, he had quarreled violently 
 with Henry; his antagonism to Henry had become 
 almost an obsession; and Constance had her father's 
 word for it that, a greater part of the time, Uncle 
 Benny had no just ground for his quarrel with Henry. 
 A most violent quarrel had occurred upon that last 
 day, and undoubtedly its fury had carried Uncle 
 Benny to the length of going to Constance as he 
 did. 
 
 Constance had come to this conclusion during the 
 last gloomy and stormy days; this morning, gazing 
 out upon the shining lake, clear blue under the wintry 
 sun, she was more satisfied than before. Summoning 
 her maid, she inquired first whether anything had been 
 heard since last night of Mr. Corvet. She was quite 
 sure, if her father had had word, he would have 
 awakened her; and there was no news. But Uncle 
 Benny's son, she remembered, was coming to break- 
 fast. 
 
 Uncle Benny's son ! That suggested to Constance's 
 mother only something unpleasant, something to be 
 avoided and considered as little as possible. But 
 Alan Uncle Benny's son was not unpleasant at 
 all ; he was, in fact, quite the reverse. Constance had 
 liked him from the moment that, confused a little by 
 Benjamin Corvet's absence and Simons's manner in 
 greeting him, he had turned to her for explanation ; she 
 had liked the way he had openly studied her and ap- 
 proved her, as she was approving him; she had liked 
 the way he had told her of himself, and the fact that
 
 CONSTANCE SHERRILL 101 
 
 he knew nothing of the man who proved to be his 
 father ; she had liked very much the complete absence 
 of impulse to force or to pretend feeling when she had 
 brought him the picture of his father when he, 
 amazed at himself for not feeling, had looked at her; 
 and she had liked most of all his refusal, for himself 
 and for his father, to accept positive stigma until it 
 should be proved. 
 
 She had not designated any hour for breakfast, and 
 she supposed that, coming from the country, he would 
 believe breakfast to be early. But when she got down- 
 stairs, though it was nearly nine o'clock, he had not 
 come; she went to the front window to watch for him, 
 and after a few minutes she saw him approaching, 
 looking often to the lake as though amazed by the 
 change in it. 
 
 She went to the door and herself let him in. 
 
 " Father has gone down-town," she told him, as he 
 took off his things. " Mr. Spearman returns from 
 Duluth this morning, and father wished to tell him 
 about you as soon as possible. I told father you had 
 come to see him last night; and he said to bring you 
 down to the office." 
 
 " I overslept, I'm afraid," Alan said. 
 
 "You slept well, then?" 
 
 " Very well after a while." 
 
 " I'll take you down-town myself after breakfast." 
 
 She said no more but led him into the breakfast room. 
 It was a delightful, cozy little room, Dutch furnished, 
 with a single wide window to the east, an enormous 
 hooded fireplace taking up half the north wall, and blue 
 Delft tiles set above it and paneled in the walls all 
 about the room. There were the quaint blue wind-
 
 102 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 mills, the fishing boats, the baggy-breeked, wooden-shod 
 folk, the canals and barges, the dikes and their guard- 
 ians, and the fishing ship on the Zuyder Zee. 
 
 Alan gazed about at these with quick, appreciative 
 interest. His quality of instantly noticing and ap^, 
 preciating anything unusual was, Constance thought, 
 one of his pleasantest and best characteristics. 
 
 "I like those too; I selected them myself in Hol- 
 land," she observed. 
 
 She took her place beside the coffee pot, and when 
 he remained standing " Mother always has her break- 
 fast in bed; that's your place," she said. 
 
 He took the chair opposite her. There was fruit 
 upon the table; Constance took an orange and passed 
 the little silver basket across. 
 
 " This is such a little table ; we never use it if there's 
 more than two or three of us ; and we like to help our- 
 selves here." 
 
 " I like it very much," Alan said. 
 
 "Coffee right away or later?" 
 
 " Whenever you do. You see," he explained, smiling 
 in a way that pleased her, " I haven't the slightest idea 
 what else is coming or whether anything more at all is 
 coming." A servant entered, bringing cereal and 
 cream ; he removed the fruit plates, put the cereal dish 
 and two bowls before Constance, and went out. " And 
 if any one in Blue Rapids," Alan went on, " had a man 
 waiting in the dining-room and at least one other in 
 the kitchen, they would not speak of our activities here 
 as * helping ourselves.' I'm not sure just how they 
 would speak of them ; we the people I was with in 
 Kansas had a maidservant at one time when we were 
 on the farm, and when we engaged her, she asked, ' Do
 
 CONSTANCE SHERRILL 103 
 
 you do your own stretching? ' That meant serving 
 from the stove to the table, usually." 
 
 He was silent for a few moments ; when he looked at 
 her across the table again, he seemed about to speak 
 seriously. His gaze left her face and then came back. 
 
 " Miss Sherrill," he said gravel}', " what is, or was, 
 the Miwaka? A ship?" 
 
 He made no attempt to put the question casually; 
 rather, he had made it more evident that it was of con- 
 cern to him by the change in his manner. 
 
 " The Miwaka? " Constance said, 
 
 " Do you know what it was ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I know ; and it was a ship." 
 
 " You mean it doesn't exist any more? " 
 
 " No ; it was lost a long time ago." 
 
 "On the lakes here?" 
 
 "On Lake Michigan." 
 
 " You mean by lost that it was sunk? " 
 
 " It was sunk, of course ; but no one knows what hap- 
 pened to it whether it was wrecked or burned or 
 merely foundered." 
 
 The thought of the unknown fate of the ship and 
 crew of the ship which had sailed and never reached 
 port and of which nothing ever had been heard but the 
 beating of the Indian drum set her blood tingling 
 as it had done before, when she had been told about the 
 ship, or when she had told others about it and the 
 superstition connected with.it. It was plain Alan Con- 
 rad had not asked about it idly; something about the 
 Miwaka had come to him recently and had excited his 
 intense concern. 
 
 " Whose ship was it? " he asked. " My father's? " 
 
 " No ; it belonged to Stafford and Ramsdell. They
 
 104 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 were two of the big men of their time in the carrying 
 trade on the lakes, but their line has been out of busi- 
 ness for years; both Mr. Stafford and Mr. Ramsdell 
 were lost with the Mfaaka." t 
 
 " Will you tell me about it, and them, please? " 
 " I've told you almost all I can about Stafford and 
 Ramsdell, I'm afraid; I've just heard father say that 
 they were men who could have amounted to a great deal 
 on the lakes, if they had lived especially Mr. Staf- 
 ford, who was very young. The Miwaka was a great 
 new steel ship built the year after I was born ; it was 
 the first of nearly a dozen that Stafford and Ramsdell 
 had planned to build. There was some doubt among 
 lake men about steel boats at that time; they had 
 begun to be built very largely quite a few years before, 
 but recently there had been some serious losses with 
 them. Whether it was because they were built on 
 models not fitted for the lakes, no one knew ; but several 
 of them had broken in two and sunk, and a good many 
 men were talking about going back to wood. But 
 Stafford and Ramsdell believed in steel and had finished 
 this first one of their new boats. 
 
 " She left Duluth for Chicago, loaded with ore, on 
 the first day of December, with both owners and part 
 of their families on board. She passed the Soo on the 
 third and went through the Straits of Mackinac on 
 the fourth into Lake Michigan. After that, nothing 
 was ever heard of her." 
 
 " So probably she broke in two like the others ? " 
 
 " Mr. Spearman and your father both thought so ; 
 
 but nobody ever knew no wreckage came ashore 
 
 no message of any sort from any one on board. A 
 
 very sudden winter storm had come up and was at its
 
 CONSTANCE SHERRILL 105 
 
 worst on the morning of the fifth. Uncle Benny 
 your father told me once, when I asked him about it, 
 that it was as severe for a time as any he had ever ex- 
 perienced. He very nearly lost his life in it. He had 
 just finished laying up one of his boats the Martha 
 Corvet at Manistee for the winter; and he and Mr. 
 Spearman, who then was mate of the Martha Corvet, 
 were crossing the lake in a tug with a crew of four men 
 to Manitowoc, where they were going to lay up more 
 ships. The captain and one of the deck hands of the 
 tug were washed overboard, and the engineer was lost 
 trying to save them. Uncle Benny and Mr. Spearman 
 and the stoker brought the tug in. The storm was 
 worst about five in the morning, when the M'wcaka 
 sunk." 
 
 " How do you know that the Mvwaka sunk at five," 
 Alan asked, " if no one ever heard from the ship? " 
 
 " Oh ; that was told by the Drum ! " 
 
 "The Drum?" 
 
 " Yes ; the Indian Drum ! I forgot ; of course you 
 didn't know. It's a superstition that some of the lake 
 men have, particularly those who come from people at 
 the other end of the lake. The Indian Drum is in the 
 woods there, they say. No one has seen it ; but many 
 people believe that they have heard it. It's a spirit 
 drum which beats, they say, for every ship lost on the 
 lake. There's a particular superstition about it in 
 regard to the Miwaka; for the drum beat wrong for 
 the Miwaka. You see, the people about there swear 
 that about five o'clock in the morning of the fifth, while 
 the storm was blowing terribly, they heard the drum 
 beating and knew that a ship was going down. They 
 counted the sounds as it beat the roll of the dead. It
 
 106 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 beat twenty-four before it stopped and then began to 
 beat again and beat twenty-four; so, later, everybody 
 knew it had been beating for the Miwaka; for every 
 other ship on the lake got to port; but there were 
 twenty-five altogether on the Miwaka, so either the 
 drum beat wrong or " she hesitated. 
 
 "Or what?" 
 
 " Or the drum was right, and some one was saved. 
 Many people believed that. It was years before the 
 families of the men on board gave up hope, because of 
 the Drum ; maybe some haven't given up hope yet." 
 
 Alan made no comment for a moment. Constance 
 had seen the blood flush to his face and then leave it, 
 and her own pulse had beat as swiftly as she rehearsed 
 the superstition. As he gazed at her and then away, 
 it was plain that he had heard something additional 
 about the Miwaka something which he was trying to 
 fit into what she told him. 
 
 " That's all anybody knows ? " His gaze came back 
 to her at last. 
 
 " Yes ; why did you ask about it the Miwaka? I 
 mean, how did you hear about it so you wanted to 
 know?" 
 
 He considered an instant before replying. " I en- 
 countered a reference to the Miwaka I supposed it 
 must be a ship in my father's house last night." 
 
 His manner, as he looked down at his coffee cup, 
 toying with it, prevented her then from asking more; 
 he seemed to know that she wished to press it, and he 
 looked up quickly. 
 
 " I met my servant my father's servant this 
 morning," he said. 
 
 " Yes ; he got back this morning. He came here
 
 CONSTANCE SHERRILL 107 
 
 early to report to father that he had no news of Uncle 
 Benny ; and father told him you were at the house and 
 sent him over." 
 
 Alan was studying the coffee cup again, a queer ex- 
 pression on his face which she could not read. 
 
 " He was there when I woke up this morning, Miss- 
 Sherrill. I hadn't heard anybody in the house, but I 
 saw a little table on wheels standing in the hall outside 
 mv door and a spirit lamp and a little coffee pot on it, 
 and a man bending over it, warming the cup. His 
 back was toward me, and he had straight black hair, 
 so that at first I thought he was a Jap; but when he 
 turned around, I saw he was an American Indian." 
 
 " Yes ; that was Wassaquam." 
 
 " Is that his name? He told me it was Judah." 
 
 " Yes Judah Wassaquam. He's a Chippewa 
 from the north end of the lake. They're very religious 
 there, most of the Indians at the foot of the lake; and 
 many of them have a Biblical name which they use for 
 a first name and use their Indian name for a last one." 
 
 " He called me ' Alan ' and my father * Ben.' " 
 
 " The Indians almost always call people by their 
 first names." 
 
 " He said that he had always served * Ben ' his coffee 
 that way before he got up, and so he had supposed he 
 was to do the same by me ; and also that, long ago, he 
 used to be a deck hand on one of my father's ships." 
 
 " Yes ; when Uncle Benny began to operate ships of 
 his own, many of the ships on the lakes had Indians 
 among the deck hands ; some had all Indians for crews 
 and white men only for officers. Wassaquam was on 
 the first freighter Uncle Benny ever owned a share in ; 
 afterwards he came here to Chicago with Uncle Benny.
 
 108 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 He's been looking after Uncle Benny all alone now for 
 more than ten years and he's very much devoted to 
 him, and fully trustworthy; and besides that, he's a 
 wonderful cook; but I've wondered sometimes whether 
 Uncle Benny wasn't the only city man in the world who 
 had an Indian body servant." 
 
 " You know a good deal about Indians." 
 
 " A little about the lake Indians, the Chippewas and 
 Pottawatomies in northern Michigan." 
 
 " Recollection's a funny thing," Alan said, after con- 
 sidering a moment. " This morning, after seeing 
 Judah and talking to him or rather hearing him 
 talk somehow a story got running in my head. I 
 can't make out exactly what it was about a lot of 
 animals on a raft; and there was some one with them 
 I don't know who ; I can't fit any name to him ; but 
 he had a name." 
 
 Constance bent forward quickly. "Was the name 
 Michabou?" she asked. 
 
 He returned her look, surprised. " That's it ; how 
 did you know?" 
 
 " I think I know the sjtory ; and Wassaquam would 
 have known it too, I think, if you'd ask him; but 
 probably he would have thought it impious to tell it, 
 because he and his people are great Christians now. 
 Michabou is one of the Indian names for Manitou. 
 What else do you remember of the story." 
 
 "Not much, I'm afraid just sort of scenes here 
 and there ; but I can remember the beginning now that 
 you have given me the name : ' In the beginning of 
 all things there was only water and Michabou was 
 floating on the raft with all the animals.' Michabou, 
 it seemed, wanted the land brought up so that men
 
 CONSTANCE SHERRILL 109 
 
 and animals could live on it, and he asked one of the 
 animals to go down and bring it up " 
 
 " The beaver," Constance supplied. 
 
 "Was the beaver the first one? The beaver dived 
 and stayed down a long time, so long that when he 
 came up he was breathless and completely exhausted, 
 but he had not been able to reach the bottom. Then 
 Michabou sent down " 
 
 " The otter." 
 
 " And he stayed down much longer than the beaver, 
 and when he came up at last, they dragged him on to 
 the raft quite senseless; but he hadn't been able to 
 reach the bottom either. So the animals and Michabou 
 himself were ready to give it up; but then the little 
 muskrat spoke up am I right? Was this the musk- 
 rat?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then you can finish it for me? " 
 
 " He dived and he stayed down, the little muskrat," 
 Constance continued, " longer than the beaver and the 
 otter both together. Michabou and the animals waited 
 all day for him to come up, and they watched all 
 through the night ; so then they knew he must be dead. 
 And, sure enough, they came after a while across the 
 body floating on the water and apparently lifeless. 
 They dragged him onto the raft and found that his 
 little paws were all tight shut. They forced open three 
 of the paws and found nothing in them, but when they 
 opened the last one, they found one grain of sand 
 tightly clutched in it. The little muskrat had done it ; 
 he'd reached the bottom! And out of that one grain 
 of sand, Michabou made the world." 
 
 " That's it," he said. " Now what is it? "
 
 110 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " The Indian story of creation or one of them." 
 " Not a story of the plain Indians surely." 
 " No ; of the Indians who live about the lakes and so 
 got the idea that everything was water in the first 
 place the Indians who live on the islands and penin- 
 sulas. That's how I came to know it." 
 
 " I thought that must be it," Alan said. His hand 
 trembled a little as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips. 
 
 Constance too flushed a little with excitement; it 
 was a surprisingly close and intimate thing to have 
 explored with another back into the concealments of 
 his first child consciousness, to have aided another in 
 the sensitive task of revealing himself to himself. This 
 which she had helped to bring back to him must have 
 been one of the first stories told him ; he had been a very 
 little boy, when he had been taken to Kansas, away 
 from where he must have heard this story the lakes. 
 She was a little nervous also from watching he time 
 as told by the tiny watch on her wrist. Henry's train 
 from Duluth must be in now ; and he had not yet called 
 her, as had been his custom recently, as soon as he 
 returned to town after a trip. But, in a minute, a 
 servant entered to inform her that Mr. Spearman 
 wished to speak to her. She excused herself to Alan 
 and hurried out. Henry was calling her from the 
 railroad station and, he said, from a most particularly 
 stuffy booth and, besides having a poor connection, 
 there was any amount of noise about him ; but he was 
 very anxious to see Constance as soon as possible. 
 Could she be in town that morning and have luncheon 
 with him ? Yes ; she was going down-town very soon 
 and, after luncheon, he could come home with her if 
 he wished. He certainly did wish, but he couldn't tell
 
 CONSTANCE SHERRILL 111 
 
 yet what he might have to do in the afternoon, but 
 please would she save the evening for him. She 
 promised and started to tell him about Alan, then recol- 
 lected that Henry was going to see her father imme- 
 diately at the office. 
 
 Alan was standing, waiting for her, when she re- 
 turned to the breakfast room. 
 
 "Ready to go down-town?" she asked. 
 
 "Whenever you are." 
 
 " I'll be ready in a minute. I'm planning to drive ; 
 are you afraid? " 
 
 He smiled in his pleasant way as he glanced over 
 her; she had become conscious of saying that sort of 
 thing to tempt the smile. " Oh, I'll take the risk."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DEED IN TRUST 
 
 HER little gasoline-driven car delicate as 
 though a jeweler had made it was waiting 
 for them under the canopy beside the house, 
 when they went out. She delayed a moment to ask 
 Alan to let down the windows; the sky was still clear, 
 and the sunshine had become almost warm, though the 
 breeze was sharp and cold. As the car rolled down the 
 drive, and he turned for a long look past her toward 
 the lake, she watched his expression. 
 
 "It's like a great shuttle, the ice there," she com- 
 mented, " a monster shuttle nearly three hundred miles 
 long. All winter it moves back and forth across the 
 lake, from east to west and from west to east as the 
 winds change, blocking each shore half the time and 
 forcing the winter boats to fight it always." 
 
 " The gulls go opposite to it, I suppose, sticking to 
 open water." 
 
 " The gulls ? That depends upon the weather. 
 ' Sea-gull, sea-gull,' " she quoted, " ' sit on the sand ; 
 It's never fair weather when you're on the land.' " 
 
 Alan started a little. What was that? " he asked. 
 
 " That rhyme? One which the wives of the lake men 
 teach their children. Did you remember that too?" 
 
 " After you said it." 
 
 " Can you remember the rest of it? " 
 
 " ' Green to Green Red to Red,' " Alan repeated
 
 THE DEED IN TRUST 113 
 
 to himself. " ' Green to green ' and then something 
 about how is it, ' Back her back and stopper.' " 
 " That's from a lake rhyme too, but another one ! " 
 she cried. " And that's quite a good one. It's one of 
 the pilot rules that every lake person knows. Some 
 skipper and wheelsman set them to rhyme years ago, 
 and the lake men teach the rhymes to their children so 
 that they'll never go wrong with a ship. It keeps them 
 clearer in their heads than any amount of government 
 printing. Uncle Benny used to say they've saved any 
 number of collisions. 
 
 " Meeting steamers do not dread," 
 she recited, 
 
 " When you see three lights ahead ! 
 Port your helm and show your red. 
 For passing steamers you should try 
 To keep this maxim in your eye, 
 Green to Green or Red to Red 
 Perfect safety go ahead. 
 Both in safety and in doubt, 
 Always keep a good lookout; 
 Should there be no room to turn, 
 Stop your ship and go astern." 
 
 " Now we're coming to your * back and stopper ' : 
 
 " If to starboard Red appear, 
 'Tis your duty to keep clear ; 
 Act as judgment says is proper. 
 Port or starboard back or stop her ! 
 But when on your port is seen 
 A steamer with a light of Green, 
 There's not much for you to do 
 The Green light must look out for you."
 
 114 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 She had driven the car swiftly on the boulevard to 
 the turn where the motorway makes west to Rush 
 Street, then it turned south again toward the bridge. 
 As they reached the approach to the bridge and the 
 cars congested there, Constance was required to give 
 all her attention to the steering; not until they were 
 crossing the bridge was she able to glance at her com- 
 panion's face. 
 
 To westward, on both sides of the river, summer 
 boats were laid up, their decks covered with snow. On 
 the other side, still nearer to the bridge, were some of 
 the winter vessels; and, while the motor was on the 
 span, the bells began ringing the alarm to clear the 
 bridge so it could turn to let through a great steamer 
 just in from the lake, the sun glistening on the ice cov- 
 ering its bows and sides back as far as Alan could see. 
 
 Forward of the big, black, red-banded funnel, a cloud 
 of steam bellowed up and floated back, followed by 
 another, and two deep, reverberating blasts rumbled 
 up the river majestically, imperiously. The shrill lit- 
 tle alarm bells on the bridge jangled more nervously 
 and excitedly, and the policeman at the south end 
 hastily signalled the motor cars from the city to stop, 
 while he motioned those still on the bridge to scurry off ; 
 for a ship desired to pass. 
 
 " Can we stop and see it? " Alan appealed, as Con- 
 stance ran the car from the bridge just before it began 
 to turn. 
 
 She swung the car to the side of the street and 
 stopped ; as he gazed back, he was she knew seeing 
 not only his first great ship close by, but having his 
 first view of his people the lake men from whom now 
 he knew from the feeling he had found within himself,
 
 THE DEED IN TRUST 115 
 
 and not only from what had been told him, that he 
 had come. 
 
 The ship was sheathed in ice from stem to stern ; tons 
 of the gleaming, crystal metal weighed the forecastle ; 
 the rail all round had become a frozen bulwark; the 
 boats were mere hummocks of ice; the bridge was 
 encased, and from the top of the pilot house hung down 
 giant stalactites which an axeman was chopping away. 
 Alan could see the officers on the bridge, the wheelsman, 
 the lookout ; he could see the spurt of water from the 
 ship's side as it expelled with each thrust of the pumps ; 
 he could see the whirlpool about the screw, as slowly, 
 steadily, with signals clanging clearly somewhere below, 
 the steamer went through the draw. From up the 
 river ahead of it came the jangling of bells and the 
 blowing of alarm whistles as the other bridges were 
 cleared to let the vessel through. It showed its stern 
 now; Alan read the name and registry aloud: 
 ' ' Groton of Escanaba! ' Is that one of yours, Miss 
 Sherrill ; is that one of yours and my Mr. Cor- 
 vet's?" 
 
 She shook her head, sorry that she had to say no. 
 " Shall we go on now? " 
 
 The bridge was swinging shut again ; the long line 
 of motor cars, which had accumulated from the boule- 
 vard from the city, began slowly to move. Constance 
 turned the car down the narrow street, fronted by ware- 
 houses which Alan had passed the morning before, to 
 Michigan Avenue, with the park and harbor to the left. 
 When she glanced now at Alan, she saw that a reaction 
 of depression had followed excitement at seeing the 
 steamer pass close by. 
 
 Memory, if he could call it that, had given him a
 
 116 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 feeling for ships and for the lake; a single word 
 Mvuoaka a childish rhyme and story, which he might 
 have heard repeated and have asked for a hundred 
 times in babyhood. But these recollections were only 
 what those of a three-years' child might have been. 
 Not only did they refuse to connect themselves with 
 anything else, but by the very finality of their isolation, 
 they warned him that they and perhaps a few more 
 vague memories of similar sort were all that recollec- 
 tion ever would give him. He caught himself together 
 and turned his thoughts to the approaching visit to 
 Sherrill and his father's offices. 
 
 Observing the towering buildings to his right, he was 
 able to identify some of the more prominent structures, 
 familiar from photographs of the city. Constance 
 drove swiftly a few blocks down this boulevard; then, 
 with a sudden, " Here we are ! " she shot the car to the 
 curb and stopped. She led Alan into one of the tallest 
 and best-looking of the buildings, where they took an 
 elevator placarded " Express " to the fifteenth floor. 
 
 On several of the doors opening upon the wide marble 
 hall where the elevator left them, Alan saw the names, 
 " Corvet, Sherrill and Spearman." As they passed, 
 without entering, one of these doors which stood 
 propped open, and he looked in, he got his first realiza- 
 tion of the comparatively small land accommodations 
 which a great business conducted upon the water re- 
 quires. What he saw within was only one large room, 
 with hardly more than a dozen, certainly not a score of 
 desks in it ; nearly all the desks were closed, and there 
 were not more than three or four people in the room, 
 and these apparently stenographers. Doors of several 
 smaller offices, opening upon the larger room, bore
 
 THE DEED IN TRUST 117 
 
 names, among which he saw " Mr. Corvet " and " Mr. 
 Spearman." 
 
 " It won't look like that a month from now," Con- 
 stance said, catching his expression. " Just now, you 
 know, the straits and all the northern lakes are locked 
 fast with ice. There's nothing going on now except the 
 winter traffic on Lake Michigan and, to a much smaller 
 extent, on Ontario and Erie; we have an interest in 
 some winter boats, but we don't operate them from here. 
 Next month we will be busy fitting out, and the month 
 after that all the ships we have will be upon the water." 
 
 She led the way on past to a door farther down the 
 corridor, which bore merely the name, " Lawrence 
 Sherrill " ; evidently Sherrill, who had interests aside 
 from the shipping business, had offices connected with 
 but not actually a part of the offices of Corvet, Sher- 
 rill, and Spearman. A girl was on guard on the other 
 side of the door; she recognized Constance Sherrill at 
 once and, saying that Mr. Sherrill had been awaiting 
 Mr. Conrad, she opened an inner door and led Alan 
 into a large, many-windowed room, where Sherrill was 
 sitting alone before a table-desk. He arose, a moment 
 after the door opened, and spoke a word to his daugh- 
 ter, who had followed Alan and the girl to the door, 
 but who had halted there. Constance withdrew, and 
 the girl from the outer office also went away, closing 
 the door behind her. Sherrill pulled the " visitor's 
 chair " rather close to his desk and to his own big 
 leather chair before asking Alan to seat himself. 
 
 " You wanted to tell me, or ask me, something last 
 night, my daughter has told me," Sherrill said cor- 
 dially. " I'm sorry I wasn't home when you came 
 back."
 
 118 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " I wanted to ask you, Mr. Sherrill," Alan said, 
 " about those facts in regard to Mr. CorVet which you 
 mentioned to me yesterday but did not explain. You 
 said it would not aid me to know them; but I found 
 certain things in Mr. Corvet's house last night which 
 made me want to know, if I could, everything you could 
 tell me." 
 
 Sherrill opened a drawer and took out a large, plain 
 envelope. 
 
 " I did not tell you about these yesterday, Alan," 
 he said, " not only because I had not decided how to 
 act in regard to these matters, but because I had not 
 said anything to Mr. Spearman about them previously, 
 because I expected to get some additional information 
 from you. After seeing you, I was obliged to wait for 
 Spearman to get back to town. The circumstances 
 are such that I felt myself obliged to talk them over 
 first with him ; I have done that this morning ; so I was 
 going to send for you, if you had not come down." 
 
 Sherrill thought a minute, still holding the envelope 
 closed in his hand. 
 
 "On the day after your father disappeared," he 
 went on, " but before I knew he was gone or before 
 any one except my daughter felt any alarm about him 
 I received a short note from him. I will show it to 
 you later, if you wish; its exact wording, however, is 
 unimportant. It had been mailed very late the night 
 before and apparently at the mail box near his house 
 or at least, by the postmark, somewhere in the neigh- 
 borhood; and for that reason had not been taken up 
 before the morning collection and did not reach the 
 office until I had been here and gone away again about 
 eleven o'clock. I did not get it, therefore, until after
 
 THE DEEI} IN TRUST 119 
 
 lunch. The note was agitated, almost incoherent. It 
 told me he had sent for you Alan Conrad, of Blue 
 Rapids, Kansas but spoke of you as though you 
 were some one I ought to have known about, and com- 
 mended you to my care. The remainder of it was 
 merely an agitated, almost indecipherable farewell to 
 me. When I opened the envelope, a key had fallen out. 
 The note made no reference to the key, but comparing 
 it with one I had in my pocket, I saw that it appeared 
 to be a key to a safety deposit box in the vaults of a 
 company where we both had boxes. 
 
 " The note, taken in connection with my daughter's 
 alarm about him, made it so plain that something seri- 
 ous had happened to Corvet, that my first thought was 
 merely for him. Corvet was not a man with whom one 
 could readily connect the thought of suicide ; but, Alan, 
 that was the idea I had. I hurried at once to his house, 
 but the bell was not answered, and I could not get in. 
 His servant, Wassaquam, has very few friends, and 
 the few times he has been away from home of recent 
 years have been when he visited an acquaintance of 
 his the head porter in a South Side hotel. I went to 
 the telephone in the house next door and called the hotel 
 and found Wassaquam there. I asked Wassaquam 
 about the letter to * Alan Conrad,' and Wassaquam said 
 Corvet had given it to him to post early in the evening. 
 Several hours later, Corvet had sent him out to wait at 
 the mail box for the mail collector to get the letter 
 back. Wassaquam went out to the mail box, and Cor- 
 vet came out there too, almost at once. The mail col- 
 lector, when he came, told them, of course, that he 
 could not return the letter; but Corvet himself had 
 taken the letters and looked them through. Corvet
 
 120 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 seemed very much excited when he discovered the letter 
 was not there; and when the mail man remembered 
 that he had been late on his previous trip and so must 
 have taken up the letter almost at once after it was 
 mailed, Corvet's excitement increased on learning that 
 it was already probably on the train on its way west. 
 He controlled himself later enough at least to reassure 
 Wassaquam ; for an hour or so after, when Corvet sent 
 Wassaquam away from the house, Wassaquam had gone 
 without feeling any anxiety about him. 
 
 " I told Wassaquam over the telephone only that 
 something was wrong, and hurried to my own home to 
 get the key, which I had, to the Corvet house ; but when 
 I came back and let myself into the house, I found it 
 empty and with no sign of anything having happened. 
 
 " The next morning, Alan, I went to the safe deposit 
 vaults as soon as they were open. I presented the 
 numbered key and was told that it belonged to a box 
 rented by Corvet, and that Corvet had arranged about 
 three days before for me to have access to the box if 
 I presented the key. I had only to sign my name in 
 their book and open the box. In it, Alan, I found the 
 pictures of you which I showed you yesterday and the 
 very strange communications that I am going to show 
 you now." 
 
 Sherrill opened the long envelope from which several 
 thin, folded papers fell. He picked up the largest of 
 these, which consisted of several sheets fastened to- 
 gether with a clip, and handed it to Alan without com- 
 ment. Alan, as he looked at it and turned the pages, 
 saw that it contained two columns of typewriting car- 
 ried from page to page after the manner of an account. 
 
 The column to the left was an inventory of property
 
 THE DEED IN TRUST 121 
 
 and profits and income by months and years, and the 
 one to the right was a list of losses and expenditures. 
 Beginning at an indefinite day or month in the year 
 1895, there was set down in a lump sum what was indi- 
 cated as the total of Benjamin Corvet's holdings at that 
 time. To this, in sometimes undated items, the increase 
 had been added. In the opposite column, beginning 
 apparently from the same date in 1895, were the miss- 
 ing man's expenditures. The painstaking exactness of 
 these left no doubt of their correctness ; they included 
 items for natural depreciation of perishable properties 
 and, evidently, had been worked over very recently. 
 Upon the last sheet, the second column had been de- 
 ducted from the first, and an apparently purely arbi- 
 trary sum of two hundred thousand dollars had been 
 taken away. From the remainder there had been taken 
 away approximately one hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars more. 
 
 Alan having ascertained that the papers contained 
 only this account, looked up questioningly to Sherrill ; 
 but Sherrill, without speaking, merely handed him the 
 second of the papers. . . . This, Alan saw, had evi- 
 dently been folded to fit a smaller envelope. Alan 
 unfolded it and saw that it was a letter written in the 
 same hand which had written the summons he had 
 received in Blue Rapids and had made the entries in 
 the little memorandum book of the remittances that had 
 been sent to John Welton. 
 
 It began simply : 
 
 Lawrence 
 
 This will come to you in the event that I am not 
 able to carry out the plan upon which I am now,
 
 122 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 at last, determined. You will find with this a list of 
 my possessions which, except for two hundred thou- 
 sand dollars settled upon my wife which was hers abso- 
 lutely to dispose of as she desired and a further sum 
 of approximately one hundred and fifty thousand dol- 
 lars presented in memory of her to the Hospital Serv- 
 ice in France, have been transferred to you without 
 legal reservation. 
 
 You will find deeds for all real estate executed and 
 complete except for recording of the transfer at the 
 county office; bonds, certificates, and other documents 
 representing my ownership of properties, together with 
 signed forms for their legal transfer to you, are in 
 this box. These properties, in their entirety, I give 
 to you in trust to hold for the young man now known 
 as Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids, Kansas, to deliver any 
 part or all over to him or to continue to hold it all 
 in trust for him as you shall consider to be to his 
 greatest advantage. 
 
 This for the reasons which I shall have told to you 
 or him I cannot know which one of you now, nor 
 do I know how I shall tell it. But when you learn, 
 Lawrence, think as well of me as you can and help him 
 to be charitable to me. 
 
 With the greatest affection, 
 
 BENJAMIN CORVET. 
 
 Alan, as he finished reading, looked up to Sherrill. 
 bewildered and dazed. 
 
 " What does it mean, Mr. Sherrill ? Does it mean 
 that he has gone away and left everything he had 
 everything to me? " 
 
 "The properties listed here," Sherrill touched the 
 pages Alan first had looked at, " are in the box at the 
 vault with the executed forms of their transfer to me.
 
 THE DEED IN TRUST 123 
 
 If Mr. Corvet does not return, and I do not receive any 
 other instructions, I shall take over his estate as he has 
 instructed for your advantage." 
 
 " And, Mr. Sherrill, he didn't tell you why? This is 
 all you know?" 
 
 " Yes ; you have everything now. The fact that he 
 did not give his reasons for this, either to you or me, 
 made me think at first that he might have made his plan 
 known to some one else, and that he had been opposed 
 to the extent even of violence done upon him to 
 prevent his carrying it out. But the more I have con- 
 sidered this, the less likely it has seemed to me. What- 
 ever had happened to Corvet that had so much dis- 
 turbed and excited him lately, seems rather to have pre- 
 cipitated his plan than deterred him in it. He may 
 have determined after he had written this that his 
 actions and the plain indication of his relationship to 
 you, gave all the explanation he wanted to make. All 
 we can do, Alan, is to search for him in every way we 
 can. There will be others searching for him too now; 
 for information of his disappearance has got out. 
 There have been reporters at the office this morning 
 making inquiries, and his disappearance will be in the 
 afternoon papers." 
 
 Sherrill put the papers back in their envelope, and 
 the envelope back into the drawer, which he relocked. 
 
 " I went over all this with Mr. Spearman this morn- 
 ing," he said. " He is as much at a loss to explain it 
 as I am." 
 
 He was silent for a few moments. 
 
 " The transfer of Mr. Corvet's properties to me for 
 you," he said suddenly, " includes, as you have seen, 
 Corvet's interest in the firm of ' Corvet, Sherrill and
 
 124 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Spearman.' I went very carefully through the deeds 
 and transfers in the deposit box, and it was plain that, 
 while he had taken great care with the forms of transfer 
 for all the properties, he had taken particular pains 
 with whatever related to his holdings in this company 
 and to his shipping interests. If I make over the 
 properties to you, Alan, I shall begin with those; for 
 it seems to me that your father was particularly 
 anxious that you should take a personal as well as a 
 financial place among the men who control the traffic 
 of the lakes. I have told Spearman that this is my 
 intention. He has not been able to see it my way as 
 yet ; but he may change his views, I think, after meeting 
 you." 
 
 Sherrill got up. Alan arose a little unsteadily. 
 The list of properties he had read and the letter and 
 Sherrill's statement portended so much that its mean- 
 ing could not all come to him at once. He followed 
 Sherrill through a short private corridor, flanked with 
 files lettered " Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman," into 
 the large room he had seen when he came in with Con- 
 stance. They crossed this, and Sherrill, without 
 knocking, opened the door of the office marked, " Mr. 
 Spearman." Alan, looking on past Sherrill as the door 
 opened, saw that there were some half dozen men in 
 the room, smoking and talking. They were big men 
 mostly, ruddy-skinned and weather-beaten in look, and 
 he judged from their appearance, and from the pile of 
 their, hats and coats upon a chair, that they were offi- 
 cers of the company's ships, idle Avhile the ships were 
 laid up, but reporting now at the offices and receiving 
 instructions as the time for fitting out approached. 
 
 His gaze went swiftly on past these men to the one
 
 THE DEED IN TRUST 125 
 
 who, half seated on the top of the flat desk, had been 
 talking to them; and his pulse closed upon his heart 
 with a shock; he started, choked with astonishment, 
 then swiftly forced himself under control. For this 
 was the man whom he had met and whom he had fought 
 in Benjamin Corvet's house the night before the big 
 man surprised in his blasphemy of Corvet and of souls 
 " in Hell " who, at sight of an apparition with a bullet 
 hole above its eye, had cried out in his fright, " You 
 got Ben ! But you won't get me damn you ! Damn 
 you ! " 
 
 Alan's shoulders drew up slightly, and the muscles 
 of his hands tightened, as Sherrill led him to this man. 
 Sherrill put his hand on the man's shoulder; his other 
 hand was still on Alan's arm. 
 
 " Henry," he said to the man, " this is Alan Conrad. 
 Alan, I want you to know my partner, Mr. Spearman." 
 
 Spearman nodded an acknowledgment, but did not 
 put out his hand ; his eyes steady, bold, watchful eyes 
 seemed measuring Alan attentively ; and in return 
 Alan, with his gaze, was measuring him.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ME. CORVET'S PARTNER 
 
 THE instant of meeting, when Alan recognized in 
 Sherrill's partner the man with whom he had 
 fought in Corvet's house, was one of swift read- 
 justment of all his thought adjustment to a situa- 
 tion of which he could not even have dreamed, and 
 which left him breathless. But for Spearman, ob- 
 viously, it was not that. Following his noncommittal 
 nod of acknowledgment of Sherrill's introduction and 
 his first steady scrutiny of Alan, the big, handsome 
 man swung himself off from the desk on which he sat 
 and leaned against it, facing them more directly. 
 
 " Oh, yes Conrad," he said. His tone was hearty ; 
 in it Alan could recognize only so much of reserve as 
 might be expected from Sherrill's partner who had 
 taken an attitude of opposition. The shipmasters, 
 looking on, could see, no doubt, not even that ; except 
 for the excitement which Alan himself could not conceal, 
 it must appear to them only an ordinary introduction. 
 
 Alan fought sharply down the swift rush of his blood 
 and the tightening of his muscles. 
 
 " I can say truly that I'm glad to meet you, Mr. 
 Spearman," he managed. 
 
 There was no recognition of anything beyond the 
 mere surface meaning of the words in Spearman's slow 
 smile of acknowledgment, as he turned from Alan to 
 Sherrill.
 
 MR. CORVET'S PARTNER 127 
 
 " I'm afraid you've taken rather a bad time, Law- 
 rence." 
 
 " You're busy, you mean. This can wait, Henry, if 
 what you're doing is immediate." 
 
 " I want some of these men to be back in Michigan 
 to-night. Can't we get together later this after- 
 noon? You'll be about here this afternoon?" His 
 manner was not casual; Alan could not think of any 
 expression of that man as being casual; but this, he 
 thought, came as near it as Spearman could come. 
 
 " I think I can be here this afternoon," Alan said. 
 
 " Would two-thirty suit you? " 
 
 " As well as any other time." 
 
 " Let's say two-thirty, then." Spearman turned and 
 noted the hour almost solicitously among the scrawled 
 appointments on his desk pad ; straightening, after this 
 act of dismissal, he walked with them to the door, his 
 hand on Sherrill's shoulder. 
 
 " Circumstances have put us Mr. Sherrill and my- 
 self in a very difficult position, Conrad," he re- 
 marked. " We want much to be fair to all con- 
 cerned " 
 
 He did not finish the sentence, but halted at the door. 
 Sherrill went out, and Alan followed him ; exasperation 
 half outrage yet half admiration at Spearman's 
 bearing, held Alan speechless. The blood rushed hotly 
 to his skin as the door closed behind them, his hands 
 clenched, and he turned back to the closed door; then 
 he checked himself and followed Sherrill, who, oblivious 
 to Alan's excitement, led the way to the door which 
 bore Corvet's name. He opened it, disclosing an empty 
 room, somewhat larger than Spearman's and similar to 
 it, except that it lacked the marks of constant use. It
 
 128 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 was plain that, since Spearman had chosen to put ofc 
 discussion of Alan's status, Sherrill did not know what 
 next to do; he stood an instant in thought, then, con- 
 tenting himself with inviting Alan to lunch, he excused 
 himself to return to his office. When he had gone, 
 closing the door behind him, Alan began to pace swiftly 
 up and down the room. 
 
 What had just passed had left him still breathless; 
 he felt bewildered. If every movement of Spearman's 
 great, handsome body had not recalled to him their 
 struggle of the night before if, as Spearman's hand 
 rested cordially on Sherrill's shoulder, Alan had not 
 seemed to feel again that big hand at his throat he 
 would almost have been ready to believe that this was 
 not the man whom he had fought. But he could not 
 doubt that ; he had recognized Spearman beyond ques- 
 tion. And Spearman had recognized him he was 
 sure of that ; he could not for an instant doubt it ; 
 Spearman had known it was Alan whom he had fought 
 in Corvet's house even before Sherrill had brought them 
 together. Was there not further proof of that in 
 Spearman's subsequent manner toward him ? For what 
 was all this cordiality except defiance? Undoubtedly 
 Spearman had acted just as he had to show how undis- 
 turbed he was, how indifferent he might be to any 
 accusation Alan could make. Not having told Sherrill 
 of the encounter in the house not having told any one 
 else Alan could not tell it now, after Sherrill had 
 informed him that Spearman opposed his accession to 
 Corvet's estate; or, at least, he could not tell who the 
 man was. In the face of Spearman's manner toward 
 him to-day, Sherrill would not believe. If Spearman 
 denied it and his story of his return to town that
 
 MR. CORVET'S PARTNER 129 
 
 morning made it perfectly certain that he would deny 
 it it would be only Alan's word against Spearman's 
 the word of a stranger unknown to Sherrill except 
 by Alan's own account of himself and the inferences 
 from Corvet's acts. There could be no risk to Spear- 
 man in that; he had nothing to fear if Alan blurted 
 an accusation against him. Spearman, perhaps, even 
 wanted him to do that hoped he would do it. Noth- 
 ing could more discredit Alan than such an unsustain- 
 able accusation against the partner who was opposing 
 Alan's taking his father's place. For it had been plain 
 that Spearman dominated Sherrill, and that Sherrill 
 felt confidence in and admiration toward him. 
 
 Alan grew hot with the realization that, in the inter- 
 view just past, Spearman had also dominated him. He 
 had been unable to find anything adequate to do, any- 
 thing adequate to answer, in opposition to this man 
 more than fifteen years older than himself and having 
 a lifelong experience in dealing with all kinds of men. 
 He would not yield to Spearman like that again; it 
 was the bewilderment of his recognition of Spearman 
 that had made him do it. Alan stopped his pacing 
 and flung himself down in the leather desk-chair which 
 had been Corvet's. He could hear, at intervals, Spear- 
 man's heavy, genial voice addressing the ship men in his 
 office ; its tones half of comradeship, half of com- 
 mand told only too plainly his dominance over those 
 men also. He heard Spearman's office door open and 
 some of the men go out ; after a time it opened again, 
 and the rest went out. He heard Spearman's voice in 
 the outer office, then heard it again as Spearman re- 
 turned alone into his private office. 
 
 There was a telephone upon Corvet's desk which un-
 
 130 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 doubtedly connected with the switchboard in the gen- 
 eral office. Alan picked up the receiver and asked for 
 " Mr. Spearman." At once the hearty voice answered, 
 " Yes." 
 
 " This is Conrad." 
 
 " I thought I told you I was busy, Conrad ! " The 
 'phone clicked as Spearman hung up the receiver. 
 
 The quality of the voice at the other end of the wire 
 had altered; it had become suddenly again the harsh 
 voice of the man who had called down curses upon 
 " Ben " and on men " in Hell " in Corvet's library. 
 
 Alan sat back in his chair, smiling a little. It had 
 not been for him, then that pretense of an almost 
 mocking cordiality ; Spearman was not trying to de- 
 ceive or to influence Alan by that. It had been merely 
 for SherrilPs benefit; or, rather, it had been because, 
 in SherrilPs presence, this had been the most effective 
 weapon against Alan which Spearman could employ. 
 Spearman might, or might not, deny to Alan his iden- 
 tity with the man whom Alan had fought; as yet Alan 
 did not know which Spearman would do; but, at least, 
 between themselves there was to be no pretense about 
 the antagonism, the opposition they felt toward one 
 another. 
 
 Little prickling thrills of excitement were leaping 
 through Alan, as he got up and moved about the room 
 again. The room was on a corner, and there were two 
 windows, one looking to the east over the white and blue 
 expanse of the harbor and the lake ; the other showing 
 the roofs and chimneys, the towers and domes of Chi- 
 cago, reaching away block after block, mile after mile 
 to the south and west, till they dimmed and blurred in 
 the brown haze of the sunlit smoke. Power and pos-
 
 MR. CORVET'S PARTNER 131 
 
 session both far exceeding Alan's most extravagant 
 dream were promised him by those papers which 
 Sherrill had shown him. When he had read down the 
 list of those properties, he had had no more feeling, 
 that such things could be his than he had had at first 
 that Corvet's house could be his until he had heard 
 the intruder moving in that house. And now it was the 
 sense that another was going to make him fight for 
 those properties that was bringing to him the realiza- 
 tion of his new power. He " had " something on that 
 man on Spearman. He did not know what that 
 thing was ; no stretch of his thought, nothing that he 
 knew about himself or others, could tell him ; but, at 
 sight of him, in the dark of Corvet's house, Spearman 
 had cried out in horror, he had screamed at him the 
 name of a sunken ship, and in terror had hurled his 
 electric torch. It was true, Spearman's terror had not 
 been at Alan Conrad; it had been because Spearman 
 had mistaken him for some one else for a ghost. 
 But, after learning that Alan was not a ghost, Spear- 
 man's attitude had not very greatly changed; he had 
 fought, he had been willing to kill rather than to be 
 caught there. 
 
 Alan thought an instant ; he would make sure he still 
 " had " that something on Spearman and would learn 
 how far it went. He took up the receiver and asked for 
 Spearman again. 
 
 Again the voice answered " Yes.'* 
 
 " I don't care whether you're busy," Alan said evenly. 
 " I think you and I had better have a talk before we 
 meet with Mr. Sherrill this afternoon. I am here in 
 Mr. Corvet's office now and will be here for half an 
 hour ; then I'm going out."
 
 132 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Spearman made no reply but again hung up the re- 
 ceiver. Alan sat waiting, his watch upon the desk 
 before him tense, expectant, with flushes of hot and 
 cold passing over him. Ten minutes passed; then 
 twenty. The telephone under Corvet's desk buzzed. 
 
 "Mr. Spearman says he will give you five minutes 
 now," the switchboard girl said. 
 
 Alan breathed deep with relief ; Spearman had wanted 
 to refuse to see him but he had not refused ; he had 
 sent for him within the time Alan had appointed and 
 after waiting until just before it expired. 
 
 Alan put his watch back into his pocket and, crossing 
 to the other office, found Spearman alone. There was 
 no pretense of courtesy now in Spearman's manner; he 
 sat motionless at his desk, his bold eyes fixed on Alan 
 intently. Alan closed the door b,ehind him and ad- 
 vanced toward the desk. 
 
 " I thought we'd better have some explanation," he 
 said, " about our meeting last night." 
 
 "Our meeting?" Spearman repeated; his eyes had 
 narrowed watchfully. 
 
 " You told Mr. Sherrill that you were in Duluth and 
 that you arrived home in Chicago only this morning. 
 Of course you don't mean to stick to ihat story with 
 me?" 
 
 " What are you talking about ? " Spearman de- 
 manded. 
 
 " Of course, I know exactly where you were a part 
 of last evening; and you know that I know. I only 
 want to know what explanation you have to offer. 
 
 Spearman leaned forward. " Talk sense and talk it 
 quick, if you have anything to say to me ! " 
 
 "I haven't told Mr. Sherrill that I found you at
 
 MR. CORVET'S PARTNER 138 
 
 Corvet's house last night; but I don't want you to 
 doubt for a minute that I know you and about your 
 damning of Benjamin Corvet and your cry about saving 
 the Miwakal " 
 
 A flash of blood came to Spearman's face; Alan, in 
 his excitement, was sure of it; but there was just that 
 flash, no more. He turned, while Spearman sat chew- 
 ing his cigar and staring at him, and went out and 
 partly closed the door. Then, suddenly, he reopened it, 
 looked in, reclosed it sharply, and went on his way, 
 shaking a little. For, as he looked back this second 
 time at the dominant, determined, able man seated at 
 his desk, what he had seen in Spearman's face was fear ; 
 fear of himself, of Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids yet 
 it was not fear of that sort which weakens or dismays ; 
 it was of that sort which, merely warning of danger 
 close at hand, determines one to use every means within 
 his power to save himself. 
 
 Alan, still trembling excitedly, crossed to Corvet's 
 office to await Sherrill. It was not, he felt sure now, 
 Alan Conrad that Spearman was opposing; it was not 
 even the apparent successor to the controlling stock of 
 Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. That Alan resembled 
 some one some one whose ghost had seemed to come 
 to Spearman and might, perhaps, have come to Corvet 
 was only incidental to what was going on now ; for 
 in Alan's presence Spearman found a threat an 
 active, present threat against himself. Alan could not 
 imagine what the nature of that threat could be. Was 
 it because there was something still concealed in Cor- 
 vet's house which Spearman feared Alan would find? 
 Or was it connected only with that some one whom 
 Alan resembled? Who was it Alan resembled? His
 
 134- THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 mother? In what had been told him, in all that he 
 had been able to learn about himself, Alan had found 
 no mention of his mother no mention, indeed, of any 
 woman. There had been mention, definite mention, of 
 but one thing 1 which seemed, no matter what form these 
 new experiences of his took, to connect himself with all 
 of them mention of a ship, a lost ship the Miwaka. 
 That name had stirred Alan, when he first heard it, with 
 the first feeling he had been able to get of any pos- 
 sible connection between himself and these people here. 
 Spoken by himself just now it had stirred, queerly 
 stirred, Spearman. What was it, then, that he Alan 
 had to do with the Miwaka? Spearman might 
 must have had something to do with it. So must Cor- 
 vet. But himself he had been not yet three years old 
 when the Miwaka was lost ! Beyond and above all other 
 questions, what had Constance Sherrill to do with it? 
 She had continued to believe that Corvet's disappear- 
 ance was related in some way to herself. Alan would 
 rather trust her intuition as to this than trust to Sher- 
 rill's contrary opinion. Yet she, certainly, could have 
 had no direct connection with a ship lost about the 
 time she was born and before her father had allied 
 himself with the firm of Corvet and Spearman. In the 
 misty warp and woof of these events, Alan could find 
 as yet nothing which could have involved her. But he 
 realized that he was thinking about her even more than 
 he was thinking about Spearman more, at that mo- 
 ment, even than about the mystery which surrounded 
 himself. 
 
 Constance Sherrill, as she went about her shopping at 
 Field's, was feeling the strangeness of the experience
 
 MR. CORVETS PARTNER 135 
 
 she had shared that morning with Alan when she had 
 completed for him the Indian creation legend and had 
 repeated the ship rhymes of his boyhood ; but her more 
 active thought was about Henry Spearman, for she 
 had a luncheon engagement with him at one o'clock. 
 He liked one always to be prompt at appointments ; he 
 either did not keep an engagement at all, or he was on 
 the minute, neither early nor late, except for some very 
 unusual circumstance. Constance could never achieve 
 such accurate punctuality, so several minutes before 
 the hour she went to the agreed corner of the silverware 
 department. 
 
 She absorbed herself intently with the selection of her 
 purchase as one o'clock approached. She was sure 
 that, after his three days' absence, he would be a mo- 
 ment early rather than late ; but after selecting what 
 she wanted, she monopolized twelve minutes more of the 
 salesman's time in showing her what she had no inten- 
 tion of purchasing, before she picked out Henry's vig- 
 orous step from the confusion of ordinary footfalls in 
 the aisle behind her. Though she had determined, a 
 few moments before, to punish him a little, she turned 
 quickly. 
 
 " Sorry I'm late, Connie." That meant that it was 
 no ordinary business matter that had detained him ; 
 but there was nothing else noticeably unusual in his 
 tone. 
 
 " It's certainly your turn to be the tardy one," she 
 admitted. 
 
 " I'd never take my turn if I coulcl help it partic- 
 ularly just after being away; you know that." 
 
 She turned carelessly to the clerk. " I'll take that 
 too," she indicated the trinket which she had exam-
 
 136 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 ined last. " Send it, please. I've finished here now, 
 Henry." 
 
 " I thought you didn't like that sort of thing." His 
 glance had gone to the bit of frippery in the clerk's 
 hand. 
 
 "I don't," she confessed. 
 
 " Then don't buy it. She doesn't want that ; don't 
 send it," he directed the salesman. 
 
 " Very well, sir." 
 
 Henry touched her arm and turned her away. She 
 flushed a little, but she was not displeased. Any of the 
 other men whom she knew would have wasted twenty 
 dollars, as lightly as herself, rather than confess, " I 
 really didn't want anything more; I just didn't want 
 to be seen waiting." They would not have admitted 
 those other men that such a sum made the slightest 
 difference to her or, by inference, to them; but Henry 
 was always willing to admit that there had been a time 
 when money meant much to him, and he gained respect 
 thereby. 
 
 The tea room of such a department store as Field's 
 offers to young people opportunities for dining together 
 without furnishing reason for even innocently connect- 
 ing their names too intimately, if a girl is not seen there 
 with the same man too often. There is something 
 essentially casual and unpremeditated about it a? 
 though the man and the girl, both shopping and both 
 hungry, had just happened to meet and go to lunch 
 together. As Constance recently had drawn closer to 
 Henry Spearman in her thought, and particularly since 
 she had been seriously considering marrying him, she 
 had clung deliberately to this unplanned appearance 
 about their meetings. She found something thrilling
 
 MR. CORVET'S PARTNER 137 
 
 in this casualness too. Spearman's bigness, which at- 
 tracted eyes to him always in a crowd, was merely the 
 first and most obvious of the things which kept atten- 
 tion on him ; there were few women who, having caught 
 sight of the big, handsome, decisive, carefully groomed 
 man, could look away at once. If Constance sus- 
 pected that, ten years before, it might have been the 
 eyes of shop-girls that followed Spearman with the 
 greatest interest, she was certain no one could find any- 
 thing flashy about him now. What he compelled now 
 was admiration and respect alike for his good looks and 
 his appearance of personal achievement a tribute 
 very different from the tolerance granted those boys 
 brought up as irresponsible inheritors of privilege like 
 herself. 
 
 As they reached the restaurant and passed between 
 the rows of tables, women looked up at him ; oblivious, 
 apparently, to their gaze, he chose a table a little ro- 
 moved from the others, where servants hurried to take 
 his order, recognizing one whose time was of impor- 
 tance. She glanced across at him, when she had settled 
 herself, and the first little trivialities of their being 
 together were over. 
 
 " I took a visitor down to your office this morning," 
 she said. 
 
 " Yes," he answered. 
 
 Constance was aware that it was only formally that 
 she had taken Alan Conrad down to confer with her 
 father; since Henry was there, she knew her father 
 would not act without his agreement, and that what- 
 ever disposition had been made regarding Alan had 
 been made by him. She wondered what that dispo- 
 sition had been.
 
 138 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " Did you like him, Henry ? " 
 
 "Like him?" She would have thought that the 
 reply was merely inattentive; but Henry was never 
 merely that. 
 
 " I hoped you would." 
 
 He did not answer at once. The waitress brought 
 their order, and he served her; then, as the waitress 
 moved away, he looked across at Constance with a long 
 scrutiny. 
 
 " You hoped I would ! " he repeated, with his slow 
 smile. "Why?" 
 
 " He seemed to be in a difficult position and to be 
 bearing himself well ; and mother was horrid to him." 
 
 "How was she horrid?" 
 
 " About the one thing which, least of all, could be 
 called his fault about his relationship to - 1 - to Mr. 
 Corvet. But he stood up to her! " 
 
 The lids drew down a little upon Spearman's eyes as 
 he gazed at her. 
 
 " You've seen a good deal of him, yesterday and to- 
 day, your father tells me," he observed. 
 
 " Yes." As she ate, she talked, telling him about her 
 first meeting with Alan and about their conversation of 
 the morning and the queer awakening in him of those 
 half memories which seemed to connect him in some way 
 with the lakes. She felt herself flushing now and then 
 with feeling, and once she surprised herself by finding 
 her eyes wet when she had finished telling Henry about 
 showing Alan the picture of his father. Henry listened 
 intently, eating slowly. When she stopped, he ap- 
 peared to be considering something. 
 
 " That's all he told you about himself? " he inquired. 
 
 " Yes."
 
 MR. CORVET'S PARTNER 13fc 
 
 "And all you told him?" 
 
 " He asked me some things about the lakes and about 
 the Mmaka, which was lost so long ago he said he'd 
 found some reference to that and wanted to know 
 whether it was a ship. I told him about it and about 
 the Drum which made people think that the crew were 
 not all lost." 
 
 " About the Drum ! What made you speak of 
 that? " The irritation in his tone startled her and she 
 looked quickly up at him. " I mean," he offered, " why 
 did you drag in a crazy superstition like that? You 
 don't believe in the Drum, Connie ! " 
 
 " It would be so interesting if some one really had 
 been saved and if the Drum had told the truth, that 
 sometimes I think I'd like to believe in it. Wouldn't 
 you, Henry? " 
 
 " No," he said abruptly. No ! " Then quickly : 
 
 " It's plain enough you like him," he remarked. 
 
 She reflected seriously. " Yes, I do ; though I 
 hadn't thought of it just that way, because I was think- 
 ing most about the position he was in' and about 
 Mr. Corvet. But I do like him." 
 
 " So do I," Spearman said with a seeming heartiness 
 that pleased her. He broke a piece of bread upon the 
 tablecloth and his big, well-shaped fingers began to roll 
 it into little balls. " At least I should like him, Con- 
 nie, if I had the sort of privilege you have to think 
 whether I liked or disliked him. I've had to consider 
 him from another point of view whether I could trust 
 him or must distrust him." 
 
 "Distrust?" Constance bent toward him impul- 
 sively in her surprise. " Distrust him ? In relation 
 to what? Why?"
 
 140 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " In relation to Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman, Con- 
 nie the company that involves your interests and 
 your father's and mine and the interests of many other 
 people small stockholders who have no influence in 
 its management, and whose interests I have to look 
 after for them. A good many of them, you know, are 
 our own men our old skippers and mates and fami- 
 lies of men who have died in our service and who left 
 their savings in stock in our ships." 
 
 " I don't understand, Henry." 
 
 "I've had to think of Conrad this morning in the 
 same way as I've had to think of Ben Corvet of recent 
 years as a threat against the interests of those peo- 
 ple." 
 
 Her color rose, and her pulse quickened. Henry 
 never had talked to her, except in the merest common- 
 places, about his relations with Uncle Benny ; it was a 
 matter in which, she had recognized, they had been op- 
 posed; and since the quarrels between the old friend 
 whom she had loved from childhood and him, who 
 wished to become now more than a mere friend to her, 
 had grown more violent, she had purposely avoided 
 mentioning Uncle Benny to Henry, and he, quite as 
 consciously, had avoided mentioning Mr. Corvet to her. 
 
 " I've known for a good many years," Spearman 
 said reluctantly, " that Ben Corvet's brain was seri- 
 ously affected. He recognized that himself even ear-> 
 Her, and admitted it to himself when he took me off 
 my ship to take charge of the company. I might have 
 gone with other people then, or it wouldn't have been 
 very long before I could have started in as a ship 
 owner myself; but, in view of his condition, Ben made 
 me promises that offered me most. Afterwards his
 
 MR. CORVET'S PARTNER 141 
 
 malady progressed so that he couldn't know himself to 
 be untrustworthy; his judgment was impaired, and he 
 planned and would have tried to carry out many things 
 which would have been disastrous for the company. I 
 had to fight him for the company's sake and for my 
 own sake and that of the others, whose interests were at 
 stake. Your father came to see that what I was doing 
 was for the company's good and has learned to trust 
 me. But you you couldn't see that quite so di- 
 rectly, of course, and you thought I didn't like Ben, 
 that there was some lack in me which made me fail to 
 appreciate him." 
 
 " No ; not that," Constance denied quickly. " Not 
 that, Henry." 
 
 "What was it then, Connie? You thought me un- 
 grateful to him? I realized that I owed a great deal 
 to him; but the only way I could pay, that debt was to 
 do exactly what I did oppose him and seem to push 
 into his place and be an ingrate; for, because I did 
 that, Ben's been a respected and honored man in this 
 town all these last years, which he couldn't have re- 
 mained if I'd let him have his way, or if I told others 
 why I had to do what I did. I didn't care what others 
 thought about me; but I did care what you thought; 
 yet if you couldn't see what I was up against because 
 of your affection for him, why that was " all right 
 too." 
 
 " No, it wasn't all right," she denied almost fiercely, 
 the flush flooding her cheeks ; a throbbing was in her 
 throat which, for an instant, stopped her. " You 
 should have told me, Henry; or I should have been 
 able to see." 
 
 " I couldn't tell vou dear," he said the last word
 
 142 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 very distinctly, but so low that she could scarcely hear. 
 " I couldn't tell you now if Ben hadn't gone away 
 as he has and this other fellow come. I couldn't tell 
 you when you wanted to keep caring so much for your 
 Uncle Benny, and he was trying to hurt me with you." 
 
 She bent toward him, her lips parted ; but now she 
 did not speak. She never had really known Henry 
 until this moment, she felt ; she had thought of him al- 
 ways as strong, almost brutal, fighting down fiercely, 
 mercilessly, his opponents and welcoming contest for 
 the joy of overwhelming others by his own decisive 
 strength and power. And she had been almost ready 
 to marry that man for his strength and dominance 
 from those qualities ; and now she knew that he was 
 merciful too indeed, more than merciful. In the 
 very contest where she had thought of him as most 
 selfish and regardless of another, she had most com- 
 pletely misapprehended. 
 
 " I ought to have seen ! " she rebuked herself to him. 
 " Surely, I should have seen that was it ! " Her hand, 
 in the reproach of her feeling, reached toward him 
 across the table; he caught it and held it in his large, 
 strong hand which, in its touch, was very tender too. 
 She had never allowed any such demonstration as this 
 before ; but now she let her hand remain in his. 
 
 "How could you see?" he defended her. "He 
 never showed to you the side he showed to me and 
 in these last years, anyway never to me the side he 
 showed to you. But after what has happened this 
 week, you can understand now; and you can see why I 
 have to distrust the young fellow who's come to claim 
 Ben Covert's place." 
 
 "Claim!" Constance repeated; she drew her hand
 
 MR. CORVET'S PARTNER 143 
 
 quietly away from his now. " Why, Henry, I did not 
 know he claimed anything; he didn't even know when 
 he came here " 
 
 " He seems, like Ben Corvet," Henry said slowly, 
 " to have the characteristic of showing one side to you, 
 another to me, Connie. With you, of course, he 
 claimed nothing; but at the office Your father 
 showed him this morning the instruments of transfer 
 that Ben seems to have left conveying to him all Ben 
 had his other properties and his interest in Corvet, 
 Sherrill, and Spearman. I very naturally objected to 
 the execution of those transfers, without considerable 
 examination, in view of Corvet's mental condition and 
 of the fact that they put the controlling stock of Cor- 
 vet, Sherrill, and Spearman in the hands of a youth 
 no one ever had heard of and one who, by his own 
 story, never had seen a ship until yesterday. And 
 when I didn't dismiss my business with a dozen men this 
 morning to take him into the company, he claimed oc- 
 casion to see me alone to threaten me." 
 
 " Threaten you, Henry? How? With what? " 
 
 " I couldn't quite make out myself, but that was his 
 tone ; he demanded an ' explanation ' of exactly what, 
 he didn't make clear. He has been given by Ben, ap- 
 parently, the technical control of Corvet, Sherrill, and 
 Spearman. His idea, if I oppose him, evidently is to 
 turn me out and take the management himself." 
 
 Constance leaned back, confused. " He Alan 
 Conrad? " she questioned. " He can't have done that, 
 Henry ! Oh, he can't have meant that ! " 
 
 " Maybe he didn't ; I said I couldn't make out what 
 he did mean," Spearman said. " Things have come 
 upon him with rather a rush, of course ; and you
 
 144 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 couldn't expect a country boy to get so many things 
 straight. He's acting, I suppose, only in the way one 
 might expect a boy to act who had been brought up in 
 poverty on a Kansas prairie and was suddenly handed 
 the possible possession of a good many millions of dol- 
 lars. It's better to believe that he's only lost his head. 
 I haven't had opportunity to tell your father these 
 things yet; but I wanted you to understand why Con- 
 rad will hardly consider me a friend." 
 
 " I'll understand you now, Henry," she promised. 
 
 He gazed at her and started to speak; then, as 
 though postponing it on account of the place, he 
 glanced around and took out his watch. 
 
 " You must go back ? " she asked. 
 
 " No ; I'm not going back to the office this after- 
 noon, Connie ; but I must call up your father." 
 
 He excused himself and went into the nearest tele- 
 phone booth.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 VIOLENCE 
 
 AT half-past three, Alan left the office. Sherrill 
 had told him an hour earlier that Spearman 
 had telephoned he would not be able to get back 
 for a conference that afternoon ; and Alan was certain 
 now that in Spearman's absence Sherrill would do noth- 
 ing further with respect to his affairs. 
 
 He halted on the ground floor of the office building 
 and bought copies of each of the afternoon papers. 
 A line completely across the pink page of one an- 
 nounced "Millionaire Ship Owner Missing!" The 
 other three papers, printed at the same hour, did not 
 display the story prominently ; and even the one which 
 did failed to make it the most conspicuous sensation. 
 A line of larger and blacker type told of a change in 
 the battle line on the west front and, where the margin 
 might have been, was the bulletin of some sensation in a 
 local divorce suit. Alan was some time in finding the 
 small print which went with the millionaire ship owner 
 heading; and when he found it, he discovered that most 
 of the space was devoted to the description of Corvet's 
 share in the development of shipping on the lakes and 
 the peculiarity of his past life instead of any definite 
 announcement concerning his fate. 
 
 The other papers printed almost identical items 
 under small head-type at the bottom of their first
 
 146 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 pages; these items stated that Benjamin Corvet, the 
 senior but inactive partner of the great shipping firm 
 of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman, whose " disappear- 
 ance " had been made the subject of sensational rumor, 
 " is believed by his partner, Mr. Henry Spearman, to 
 have simply gone away for a rest," and that no anxiety 
 was felt concerning him. Alan found no mention of 
 himself nor any of the circumstances connected with 
 Corvet's disappearance of which Sherrill had told him. 
 
 Alan threw the papers away. There was a car line 
 two blocks west, Sherrill had said, which would take 
 him within a short distance of the house on Astor 
 Street; but that neighborhood of fashion where the 
 Sherrills and now Alan himself lived was less than 
 a half hour's walk from the down-town district and, in 
 the present turmoil of his thoughts, he wanted to be 
 moving. 
 
 Spearman, he reflected as he walked north along the 
 avenue, plainly had dictated the paragraphs he just 
 had read in the papers. Sherrill, Alan knew, had de- 
 sired to keep the circumstances regarding Corvet from 
 becoming public ; and without Sherrill's agreement 
 concealment would have been impossible, but it was 
 Spearman who had checked the suspicions of outsiders 
 and determined what they must believe; and, by so 
 doing, he had made it impossible for Alan to enroll aid 
 from the newspapers or the police. Alan did not know 
 whether he might have found it expedient to seek pub- 
 licity ; but now he had not a single proof of anything 
 he could tell. For Sherrill, naturally, had retained 
 the papers Corvet had left. Alan could not hope to 
 obtain credence from Sherrill and, without Sherrill's 
 aid, he could not obtain credence from any one else.
 
 VIOLENCE 147 
 
 Was there, then, no one whom Alan could tell of his 
 encounter with Spearman in Corvet's house, with prob- 
 ability of receiving belief? Alan had not been think- 
 ing directly of Constance Sherrill, as he walked swiftly 
 north to the Drive; but she was, in a way, present in 
 all his thoughts. She had shown interest in him, or 
 at least in the position he was in, and sympathy; he 
 had even begun to tell her about these things when he 
 had spoken to her of some event in Corvet's house which 
 had given him the name " Miwaka," and he had asked 
 her if it was a ship. And there could be no possible 
 consequent peril to her in telling her ; the peril, if there 
 was any, would be only to himself. 
 
 His step quickened. As he approached the Sherrill 
 house, he saw standing at the curb an open roadster 
 with a liveried chauffeur; he had seen that roadster, 
 he recognized with a little start, in front of the office 
 building that morning when Constance had taken him 
 down-town. He turned into the walk and rang the 
 bell. 
 
 The servant who opened the door knew him and 
 seemed to accept his right of entry to the house, for he 
 drew back for Alan to enter. Alan went into the hall 
 and waited for the servant to follow. " Is Miss Sher- 
 rill in ? " he asked. 
 
 " I'll see, sir." The man disappeared. Alan, wait 
 ing, did not hear Constance's voice in reply to the an- 
 nouncement of the' servant, but Spearman's vigorous 
 tones. The servant returned. " Miss Sherrill will see 
 you in a minute, sir." 
 
 Through the wide doorway to the drawing-room, 
 Alan could see the smaller, portiered entrance to the 
 room beyond Sherrill's study. The curtains parted,
 
 148 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 and Constance and Spearman came into this inner 
 doorway; they stood an instant there in talk. As 
 Constance started away, Spearman suddenly drew her 
 back to him and kissed her. Alan's shoulders spon- 
 taneously jerked back, and his hands clenched; he did 
 not look away and, as she approached, she became 
 aware that he had seen. 
 
 She came to him, very quiet and very flushed; then 
 she was quite pale as she asked him, " You wanted 
 me?" 
 
 He was white as she, and could not speak at once. 
 " You told me last night, Miss Sherrill," he said, 
 " that the last thing that Mr. Corvet did the last 
 that you know of was to warn you against one of 
 your friends. Who was that?" 
 
 She flushed uneasily. " You mustn't attach any im- 
 portance to that ; I didn't mean you to. There was no 
 reason for what Mr. Corvet said, except in Mr. Cor- 
 vet's own mind. He had a quite unreasonable animos- 
 
 ity-" > 
 
 " Against Mr. Spearman, you mean." 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 ".His animosity was against Mr. Spearman, Miss 
 Sherrill, wasn't it? That is the only animosity of Mr. 
 Corvet's that any one has told me about." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " It was against Mr. Spearman that he warned you, 
 then?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Thank you." He turned and, not waiting for the 
 man, let himself out. He should have known it when 
 he had seen that Spearman, after announcing himself 
 as unable to get back to the office, was with Constance.
 
 VIOLENCE 149 
 
 He went swiftly around the block to his own house 
 and let himself in at the front door with his key. 
 The house was warm ; a shaded lamp on the table in the 
 larger library was lighted, a fire was burning in the 
 open grate, and the rooms had been swept and dusted. 
 The Indian came into the hall to take his coat and hat. 
 
 " Dinner is at seven," Wassaquam announced. 
 " You want some change about that? " 
 
 " No ; seven is all right." 
 
 Alan went up-stairs to the room next to Corvet's 
 which he had appropriated for his own use the night 
 before, and found it now prepared for his occupancy. 
 His suitcase, unpacked, had been put away in the 
 closet; the clothing it had contained had been put in 
 the dresser drawers, and the toilet articles arranged 
 upon the top of the dresser and in the cabinet of the 
 little connecting bath. So, clearly, Wassaquam had 
 accepted him as an occupant of the house, though upon 
 what status Alan could not guess. He had spoken of 
 Wassaquam to Constance as his servant ; but Wassa- 
 quam was not that ; he was Corvet's servant faithful 
 and devoted to Corvet, Constance had said and Alan 
 could not think of Wassaquam as the sort of servant 
 that " went with the house." The Indian's manner to- 
 ward himself had been noncommittal, even stolid. 
 
 When Alan came down again to the first floor, Was- 
 saquam was nowhere about, but he heard sounds in the 
 service rooms on the basement floor. He went part 
 way down the service stairs and saw the Indian in the 
 kitchen, preparing dinner. Wassaquam had not heard 
 his approach, and Alan stood an instant watching the 
 Indian's tall, thin figure and the quick movements of 
 his disproportionately small, well-shaped hands, almost
 
 150 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 like a woman's; then he scuffed his foot upon the stair, 
 and Wassaquam turned swiftly about. 
 
 " Anybody been here to-day, Judah? " Alan asked. 
 
 " No, Alan. I called tradesmen ; they came. There 
 were young men from the newspapers." 
 
 " They came here, did they ? Then why did you say 
 no one came? " 
 
 " I did not let them in." 
 " What did you tell them? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Henry telephoned I was to tell them nothing." 
 
 " You mean Henry Spearman? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Do you take orders from him, Judah?" 
 
 " I took that order, Alan." 
 
 Alan hesitated. " You've been here in the house all 
 day?" 
 
 " Yes, Alan." 
 
 Alan went back to the first floor and into the smaller 
 library. The room was dark with the early winter 
 dusk, and he switched on the light ; then he knelt and 
 pulled out one of the drawers he "had seen Spearman 
 searching through the night before, and carefully ex- 
 amined the papers in it one by one, but found them 
 only ordinary papers. He pulled the drawer com- 
 pletely out and sounded the wall behind it and the par- 
 titions on both sides but they appeared solid. He put 
 the drawer back in and went on to examine the next 
 one, and, after that, the others. The clocks in the 
 house had been wound, for presently the clock in the 
 library struck six, and another in the hall chimed 
 slowly. An hour later, when the clocks chimed again,
 
 VIOLENCE 151 
 
 Alan looked up and saw Wassaquam's small black eyes, 
 deep set in their large eye sockets, fixed on him in- 
 tently through the door. How long the Indian had 
 been there, Alan could not guess ; he had not heard his 
 step. 
 
 " What are you looking for, Alan ? " the Indian 
 asked. 
 
 Alan reflected a moment. "Mr. Sherrill thought 
 that Mr. Corvet might have left a record of some sort 
 here for me, Judah. Do you know of anything like 
 that?" 
 
 " No. That is what you are looking for? " 
 
 " Yes. Do you know of any place where Mr. Corvet 
 would have been likely to pui: away anything like 
 that?" 
 
 " Ben put papers in all these drawers ; he put them 
 up-stairs, too where you have seen." 
 
 " Nowhere else, Judah? " 
 
 " If he put things anywhere else, Alan, I have not 
 seen. Dinner is served, Alan." 
 
 Alan went to the lavatory on the first floor and 
 washed the dust from his hands and face ; then he went 
 into the dining-room. A place had been set at the 
 dining table around the corner from the place where, 
 as the worn rug showed, the lonely occupant of the 
 house had been accustomed to sit. Benjamin Corvet's 
 armchair, with its worn leather back, had been left 
 against the wall : so had another unworn armchair 
 which Alan understood must have been Mrs. Corvet's ; 
 and an armless chair had been set for Alan between 
 their places. Wassaquam, having served the dinner, 
 took his place behind Alan's chair, ready to pass him 
 what he needed ; but the Indian's silent, watchful pres-
 
 152 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 ence there behind him where he could not see his face, 
 disturbed Alan, and he twisted himself about to look at 
 him. 
 
 " Would you mind, Judah," he inquired, " if I asked 
 you to stand over there instead of where you are? " 
 
 The 'Indian, without answering, moved around to the 
 other side of the table, where he stood facing Alan. 
 
 "You're a Chippewa, aren't you, Judah?" Alan 
 asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Your people live at the other end of the lake, don't 
 they?" 
 
 " Yes, Alan." 
 
 " Have you ever heard of the Indian Drum they talk 
 about up there, that they say sounds when a ship goes 
 down on the lake? " 
 
 The Indian's eyes sparkled excitedly. " Yes," he 
 said. . - : f 
 
 " Do you believe in it? " 
 
 " Not just believe ; I know. That is old Indian coun- 
 try up there, Alan L'arbre Croche Cross Village 
 Middle Village. A big town of Ottawas was there 
 in old days; Pottawatomies too, and Chippewas. In- 
 dians now are all Christians, Catholics, and Methodists 
 who hold camp meetings and speak beautifully. But 
 some things of the old days are left. The Drum is like 
 that. Everybody knows that it sounds for those who 
 die on the lake." 
 
 " How do they know, Judah ? How do you yourself 
 know?" 
 
 " I have heard it. It sounded for my father." 
 
 "How was that?" 
 
 " Like this. My father sold some bullocks to a man
 
 VIOLENCE 153 
 
 on Beaver Island. The man kept store on Beaver 
 Island, Alan. No Indian liked him. He would not 
 hand anything to an Indian or wrap anything in paper 
 for an Indian. Say it was like this : An Indian comes 
 in to buy salt pork. First the man would get the 
 money. Then, Alan, he would take his hook and pull 
 the pork up out of the barrel and throw it on the dirty 
 floor for the Indian to pick up. He said Indians must 
 take their food off of the floor like dogs. 
 
 " My father had to take the bullocks to the man, 
 across to Beaver Island. He had a Mackinaw boat, 
 very little, with a sail made brown by boiling it with tan 
 bark, so that it would not wear out. At first the 
 Indians did not know who the bullocks were for, so they 
 helped him. He tied the legs of the bullocks, the front 
 legs and the back legs, then all four legs together, and 
 the Indians helped him put them in the boat. When 
 they found out the bullocks were for the man on Beaver 
 Island, the Indians would not help him any longer. He 
 had to take them across alone. Besides, it was bad 
 weather, the beginning of a storm. 
 
 " He went away, and my mother went to pick berries 
 I was small then. Pretty soon I saw my mother 
 coming back. She had no berries, and her hair was 
 hanging down, and she was wailing. She took me in 
 her arms and said my father was dead. Other Indians 
 came around and asked her how she knew, and she said 
 she had heard the Drum. The Indians went out to 
 listen." 
 
 "Did you go?" 
 
 "Yes;" I went." 
 
 " How old were you, Judah " 
 
 " Five years."
 
 154 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " That was the time you heard it? " 
 
 "Yes; it would beat once, then there would be si- 
 lence; then it would beat again. It frightened us to 
 hear it. The Indians would scream and beat their 
 bodies with their hands when the sound came. We 
 listened until night ; there was a storm all the time grow- 
 ing greater in the dark, but no rain. The Drum would 
 beat once; then nothing; then it would beat again once 
 never two or more times. So we knew it was for 
 my father. It is supposed the feet of the bullocks came 
 untied, and the bullocks tipped the boat over. They 
 found near the island the body of one of the bullocks 
 floating in the water, and its feet were untied. My 
 father's body was on the beach near there." 
 
 " Did you ever hear of a ship called the Miwaka, 
 Judah?" 
 
 " That was long ago," the Indian answered. 
 
 " They say that the Drum beat wrong when the 
 Mizcaka went down that it was one beat short of the 
 right number." 
 
 " That was long ago," Wassaquam merely repeated. 
 
 " Did Mr. Corvct ever speak to you about the 
 Mhcaka? " 
 
 " No ; he asked me once if I had ever heard the Drum. 
 I told him." 
 
 Wassaquam removed the dinner and brought Alan a 
 dessert. He returned to stand in the place across the 
 table that Alan had assigned to him, and stood looking 
 down at Alan, steadily and thoughtfully. 
 
 " Do I look like any one you ever saw before, 
 Judah? " Alan inquired of him. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Is that what you were thinking? "
 
 VIOLENCE 155 
 
 " That is what I was thinking. Will coffee be served 
 in the library, Alan ? " 
 
 Alan crossed to the library and seated himself in the 
 chair where his father had been accustomed to sit. 
 Wassaquam brought him the single small cup of coffee, 
 lit the spirit lamp on the smoking stand, and moved 
 that over; then he went away. When he had finished 
 his coffee, Alan went into the smaller connecting room 
 and recommenced his examination of the drawers under 
 the bookshelves. He could hear the Indian moving 
 about his tasks, and twice Wassaquam came to the 
 door of the room and looked in on him ; but he did not 
 offer to say anything, and Alan did not speak to him. 
 At ten o'clock, Alan stopped his search and went back 
 to the chair in the library. He dozed; for he awoke 
 with a start and a feeling that some one had been 
 bending over him, and gazed up into Wassaquam's face. 
 The Indian had been scrutinizing him with intent, 
 anxious inquiry. He moved away, but Alan called him 
 back. 
 
 " When Mr. Corvet disappeared, Judah, you went to 
 look for him up at Manistique, where he was born 
 at least Mr. Sherrill said that was where you went. 
 Why did you think you might find him there?" Alan 
 asked. 
 
 " In the end, I think, a man maybe goes back to the 
 place where he began. That's all, Alan." 
 
 " In the end! What do you mean by that? Whaf 
 do you think has become of Mr. Corvet ? " 
 
 " I think now Ben's dead." 
 
 " What makes you think that? " 
 
 " Nothing makes me think ; I think it myself." 
 
 " I see. You mean you have no reason more than
 
 156 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 others for thinking it; but that is what you believe." 
 
 " Yes." Wassaquam went away, and Alan heard 
 him on the back stairs, ascending to his room. 
 
 When Alan went up to his own room, after making 
 the rounds to see that the house was locked, a droning 
 chant came to him from the third floor. He paused in 
 the hall and listened, then went on up to the floor 
 above. A flickering light came to him through the 
 half-open door of a room at the front of the house ; he 
 went a little way toward it and looked in. Two thick 
 candles were burning before a crucifix, below which the 
 Indian knelt, prayer book in hand and rocking to and 
 fro as he droned his supplications. 
 
 A word or two came to Alan, but without them 
 Wassaquam's occupation was plain ; he was praying for 
 the repose of the dead the Catholic chant taught to 
 him, as it had been taught undoubtedly to his fathers, 
 by the French Jesuits of the lakes. The intoned chant 
 for Corvet's soul, by the man who had heard the Drum, 
 followed and still came to Alan, as he returned to the 
 second floor. 
 
 He had not been able to determine, during the even- 
 ing, Wassaquam's attitude toward him. Having no one 
 else to trust, Alan had been obliged to put a certain 
 amount of trust in the Indian ; so as he had explained to 
 Wassaquam that morning that the desk and the drawers 
 in the little room off Corvet's had been forced, and had 
 warned him to see that no one, who had not proper busi- 
 ness there, entered the house. Wassaquam had ap- 
 peared to accept this order; but now Wassaquam had 
 implied that it was not because of Alan's order that he 
 had refused reporters admission to the house. The de- 
 velopments of the day had tremendously altered things
 
 VIOLENCE 157 
 
 in one respect; for Alan, the night before, had not 
 thought of the intruder into the house as one who could 
 claim an ordinary right of entrance there; but now he 
 knew him to be the one who except for Sherrill - 
 might most naturally come to the house; one, too, for 
 whom Wassaquam appeared to grant a Certain right 
 of direction of affairs there. So, at this thought, Alan 
 moved angrily ; the house was his Alan's. He had 
 noted particularly, when Sherrill had showed him the 
 list of properties whose transfer to him Corvet had left 
 at Sherrill's discretion, that the house was not among 
 them; and he had understood that this was because 
 Corvet had left Sherrill no discretion as to the house. 
 Corvet's direct, unconditional gift of the house by deed 
 to Alan had been one of Sherrill's reasons for believing 
 that if Corvet had left anything which could explain 
 his disappearance, it would be found in the house. 
 
 Unless Spearman had visited the house during the 
 day and had obtained what he had been searching for 
 the night before and Alan believed he had not done 
 that it was still in the house. Alan's hands 
 clenched; he would not give Spearman such a chance 
 as that again ; and he himself would continue his search 
 of the house exhaustively, room by room, article of 
 furniture by article of furniture. 
 
 Alan started and went quickly to the open door of 
 his room, as he heard voices now somewhere within the 
 house. One of the voices he recognized as Wassa- 
 quam's ; the other indistinct, thick, accusing was un- 
 known to him; it certainly was not Spearman's. He 
 had not heard Wassaquam go down-stairs, and he had 
 not heard the doorbell, so he ran first to the third floor; 
 but the room where he had seen Wassaquam was empty.
 
 158 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 He descended again swiftly to the first floor, and found 
 Wassaquam standing in the front hall, alone. 
 
 " Who was here, Judah? " Alan demanded. 
 
 " A man," the Indian answered stolidly. " He was 
 drunk; I put him out." 
 
 " What did he come for? " 
 
 " He came to see Ben. I put him out ; he is gone, 
 Alan." 
 
 Alan flung open the front door and looked out, but 
 he saw no one. 
 
 " What did he want of Mr. Corvet, Judah? " 
 
 " I do not know. I told him Ben was not here ; he 
 was angry, but he went away." 
 
 " Has he ever come here before ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he comes twice." 
 
 " He has been here twice? " 
 
 " More than that ; every year he comes twice, Alan. 
 Once he came oftener." 
 
 " How long has he been doing that ? " 
 
 " Since I can remember." 
 
 "Is he a friend of Mr. Corvet?" 
 
 " No friend no ! " 
 
 " But Mr. Corvet saw him when he came here? " 
 
 " Always, Alan." 
 
 " And you don't know at all what he came about? " 
 
 " How should I know? No; I do not." 
 
 Alan got his coat and hat. The sudden disappear- 
 ance of the man might mean only that he had hurried 
 away, but it might mean too that he was still lurking 
 near the house. Alan had decided to make the circuit 
 of the house and determine that. But as he came out 
 on to the porch, a figure more than a block away to the 
 south strode with uncertain step out into the light of a
 
 VIOLENCE 159 
 
 street lamp, halted and faced about, and shook his fist 
 back at the house. Alan dragged the Indian out on to 
 the porch. 
 
 " Is that the man, Judah? " he demanded. 
 
 " Yes, Alan." 
 
 Alan ran down the steps and at full speed after the 
 man. The other had turned west at the corner where 
 Alan had seen him; but even though Alan slipped as he 
 tried to run upon the snowy walks, he must be gaining 
 fast upon him. He saw him again, when he had reached 
 the corner where the man had turned, traveling west- 
 ward with that quick uncertain step toward Clark 
 Street; at that corner the man turned south. But 
 when Alan reached the corner, he was nowhere in sight. 
 To the south, Clark Street reached away, garish with 
 electric signs and with a half dozen saloons to every 
 block. That the man was drunk made it probable he 
 had turned into one of these places. Alan went into 
 every one of them for fully a half mile and looked about, 
 but he found no one even resembling the man he had 
 been following. He retraced his steps for several 
 blocks, still looking; then he gave it up and returned 
 eastward toward the Drive. 
 
 The side street leading to the Drive was less well 
 lighted; dark entry ways and alleys opened on it; but 
 the night was clear. The stars, with the shining sword 
 of Orion almost overhead, gleamed with midwinter 
 brightness, and to the west the crescent of the moon 
 was hanging and throwing faint shadows over the snow. 
 Alan could see at the end of the street, beyond the 
 yellow glow of the distant boulevard lights, the smooth, 
 chill surface of the lake. A white light rode above it ; 
 now, below the white light, he saw a red speck the
 
 160 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 masthead and port lanterns of a steamer northward 
 bound. Farther out a second white glow appeared 
 from behind the obscuration of the buildings and below 
 it a green speck a starboard light. The information 
 he had gained that day enabled him to recognize in these 
 lights two steamers passing one another at the harbor 
 mouth. 
 
 " Red to red," Alan murmured to himself. " Green 
 to green Red to red, perfect safety, go ahead ! " he 
 repeated. 
 
 It brought him, with marvelous vividness, back to 
 Constance Sherrill. Events since he had talked with 
 her that morning had put them far apart once more ; 
 but, in another way, they were being drawn closer 
 together. For he knew now that she was caught as 
 well as he in the mesh of consequences of acts not their 
 own. Benjamin Corvet, in the anguish of the last 
 hours before fear of those consequences had driven him 
 away, had given her a warning against Spearman so 
 wild that it defeated itself; for Alan merely to repeat 
 that warning, with no more than he yet knew, would 
 be equally futile. But into the contest between Spear- 
 man and himself that contest, he was beginning to 
 feel, which must threaten destruction either to Spear- 
 man or to him she had entered. Her happiness, her 
 future, were at stake ; her fate, he was certain now, de- 
 pended upon discovery of those events tied tight in the 
 mystery of Alan's own identity which Spearman knew, 
 and the threat of which at moments appalled him. 
 Alan winced as there came before him in the darkness 
 of the street the vision of Constance in Spearman's 
 arms and of the kiss that he had seen that afternoon. 
 
 He staggered, slipped, fell suddenly forward upon
 
 VIOLENCE 161 
 
 his knees under a stunning, crushing blow upon his 
 head from behind. Thought, consciousness almost lost, 
 he struggled, twisting himself about to grasp at his 
 assailant. He caught the man's clothing, trying to 
 drag himself up ; fighting blindly, dazedly, unable to see 
 or think, he shouted aloud and then again, aloud. He 
 seemed in the distance to hear answering cries ; but the 
 weight and strength of the other was bearing him down 
 again to his knees ; he tried to slip aside from it, to rise. 
 Then another blow, crushing and sickening, descended 
 on his head ; even hearing left him and, unconscious, he 
 fell forward on to the snow and lay still.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE 
 
 < 4 r ^HE name seems like Sherrill," the interne 
 agreed. " He said it before when we had him 
 on the table up-stairs ; and he has said it now 
 twice distinctly Sherrill." 
 
 " His name, do you think? " 
 
 " I shouldn't say so ; he seems trying to speak to 
 some one named Sherrill." 
 
 The nurse waited a few minutes. " Yes ; that's how 
 it seems to me, sir. He said something that sounded 
 like ' Connie ' a while ago, and once he said ' Jim.' 
 There are only four Sherrills in the telephone book, two 
 of them in Evanston and one way out in Minoota." 
 
 "The other?" 
 
 " They're only about six blocks from where he was 
 picked up ; but they're on the Drive the Lawrence 
 Sherrills." 
 
 The interne whistled softly and looked more interest- 
 edly at his patient's features. He glanced at his watch, 
 which showed the hour of the morning to be half-past 
 four. " You'd better make a note of it," he said. 
 " He's not a Chicagoan ; his clothes were made some- 
 where in Kansas. He'll be conscious some time during 
 the day; there's only a slight fracture, and Per- 
 haps you'd better call the Sherrill house, anyway. If
 
 A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE 163 
 
 he's not known there, no harm done ; and if he's one of 
 their friends and he should . . ." 
 
 The nurse nodded and moved off. 
 
 Thus it was that at a quarter to five Constance Sher- 
 rill was awakened by the knocking of one of the servants 
 at her father's door. Her father went down-stairs to 
 the telephone instrument where he might reply without 
 disturbing Mrs. Sherrill. Constance, kimona over her 
 shoulders, stood at the top of the stairs and waited. It 
 became plain to her at once that whatever had happened 
 had been to Alan Conrad. 
 
 " Yes. . . . Yes. . . . You are giving him every pos- 
 sible care? ... At once." 
 
 She ran part way down the stairs and met her father 
 as he came up. He told her of the situation briefly. 
 
 " He was attacked on the street late last night ; he 
 was unconscious when they found him and took him 
 to the hospital, and has been unconscious ever since. 
 They say it was an ordinary street attack for robbery. 
 I shall go at once, of course; but you can do nothing. 
 He would not know you if you came ; and of course he 
 is in competent hands. No ; no one can say yet how 
 seriously he is injured." 
 
 She waited in the hall while her father dressed, 
 after calling the garage on the house telephone for him 
 and ordering the motor. When he had gone, she re- 
 turned anxiously to her own rooms ; he had promised to 
 call her after reaching the hospital and as soon as he 
 had learned the particulars of Alan's cdndition. It was 
 ridiculous, of course, to attach any responsibility to her 
 father or herself for what had happened to Alan a 
 street attack such as might have happened to any one 
 yet she felt that they were in part responsible.
 
 164* THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Alan Conrad had come to Chicago, not by their direc- 
 tion, but by Benjamin Corvet's; but Uncle Benny being 
 gone, they had been the ones who met him, they had 
 received him into their own house; but they had not 
 thought to warn him of the dangers of the city and, 
 afterward, they had let him go to live alone in the 
 house in Astor Street with no better adviser than 
 Wassaquam. Now, and perhaps because they had not 
 warned him, he had met injury and, it might be, more 
 than mere injury; he might be dying. 
 
 She walked anxiously up and down her room, clutch- 
 ing her kimona about her; it would be some time yet 
 before she could hear from her father. She went to the 
 telephone on the stand beside her bed and called Henry 
 Spearman at his apartments. His servant answered ; 
 and, after an interval, Henry's voice came to her. She 
 told him all that she knew of what had occurred. 
 
 " Do you want me to go over to the hospital? " he 
 asked at once. 
 
 " No ; father has gone. There is nothing any one 
 can do. I'll call you again as soon as I hear from 
 father." 
 
 He seemed to appreciate from her tone the anxiety 
 she felt; for he set himself to soothe and encourage 
 her. She listened, answered, and then hung up the 
 receiver, anxious not to interfere with the expected call 
 from her father. She moved about the room again, 
 oppressed by the long wait, until the 'phone rang, and 
 she sprang to it ; it was her father calling from the hos- 
 pital. Alan had had a few moments' consciousness, but 
 Sherrill had not been allowed to see him; now, by the 
 report of the nurse, Alan was sleeping, and both nurse 
 and internes assured Sherrill that, this being the case,
 
 A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE 165 
 
 there was no reason for anxiety concerning him; but 
 Sherrill would wait at the hospital a little longer to 
 make sure. Constance's breath caught as she answered 
 him, and her eyes filled with tears of relief. She called 
 Henry again, and he evidently had been waiting, for he 
 answered at once ; he listened without comment to her 
 repetition of her father's report. 
 
 " All right," he said, when she had finished. " I'm 
 coming over, Connie." 
 
 "Now?" 
 
 " Yes ; right away." 
 
 " You must give me time to dress ! " His assumption 
 of right to come to her at this early hour recalled to her 
 forcibly the closer relation which Henry now assumed 
 as existing between them ; indeed, as more than existing, 
 as progressing. And had not she admitted that rela- 
 tion by telephoning to him during her anxiety? She 
 had not thought how that must appear to him ; she had 
 not thought about it at all; she had just done it. 
 
 She had been one of those who think of betrothal in 
 terms of question and answer, of a moment when de- 
 cision is formulated and spoken ; she had supposed that, 
 by withholding reply to Henry's question put even 
 before Uncle Benny went away, she was thereby main- 
 taining the same relation between Henry and herself. 
 But now she was discovering that this was not so ; she 
 was realizing that Henry had not required formal 
 answer to him because he considered that such answer 
 had become superfluous ; her yes, if she accepted him 
 now, would not establish a new bond, it would merely 
 acknowledge what was already understood. She had 
 accepted that had she not when, in the rush of 
 her feeling, she had thrust her hand into his the day
 
 166 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 before ; she had accepted it, even more undeniably, when 
 he had seized her and kissed her. 
 
 Not that she had sought or even consciously per- 
 mitted, that ; it had, indeed, surprised her. While they 
 were alone together, and he was telling her things about 
 himself, somewhat as he had at the table at Field's, 
 Alan Conrad was announced, and she had risen to go. 
 Henry had tried to detain her ; then, as he looked down 
 at her, hot impulse had seemed to conquer him; he 
 caught her, irresistibly ; amazed, bewildered, she looked 
 up at him, and he bent and kissed her. The power of 
 his arms about her she could feel them yet, some- 
 times half frightened, half enthralled her. But his 
 lips against her cheek she had turned her lips away 
 so that his pressed her cheek ! She had been quite un- 
 able to know how she had felt then, because at that 
 instant she had realized that she was seen. So she had 
 disengaged herself as quickly as possible and, after 
 Alan was gone, she had fled to her room without going 
 back to Henry at all. 
 
 How could she have expected Henry to have inter- 
 preted that flight from him as disapproval when she had 
 not meant it as that; when, indeed, she did not know 
 herself what was stirring in her that instinct to go away 
 alone? She had not by that disowned the new relation 
 which he had accepted as established between them. 
 And did she wish to disown it now? What had hap- 
 pened had come sooner and with less of her will active 
 in it than she had expected ; but she knew it was only 
 what she had expected to come. The pride she had felt 
 in being with him was, she realized, only anticipatory 
 of the pride she would experience as his wife. When 
 she considered the feeling of her family and her friends,
 
 A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE 167 
 
 she knew that, though some would go through the for- 
 mal deploring that Henry had not better birth, all 
 would be satisfied and more than satisfied; they would 
 even boast about Henry a little, and entertain him in 
 her honor, and show him off. There was no one now 
 that poor Uncle Benny was gone who would seri- 
 ously deplore it at all. 
 
 Constance had recognized no relic of uneasiness from 
 Uncle Benny's last appeal to her ; she understood that 
 thoroughly. Or, at least, she had understood that; 
 now was there a change in the circumstances of that 
 understanding, because of what had happened to Alan, 
 that she found herself re-defining to herself her rela- 
 tion with Henry? No; it had nothing to do with 
 Henry, of course; it referred only to Benjamin Corvet. 
 Uncle Benny had " gone away " from his house on 
 Astor Street, leaving his place there to his son, Alan 
 Conrad. Something which had disturbed and excited 
 Alan had happened to him on the first night he had 
 passed in that house; and now, it appeared, he had 
 been prevented from passing a second night there. 
 What had prevented him had been an attempted rob- 
 bery upon the street, her father had said. But sup- 
 pose it had been something else than robbery. 
 
 She could not formulate more definitely this thought, 
 but it persisted ; she could not deny it entirely and 
 shake it off. 
 
 To Alan Conrad, in the late afternoon of that day, 
 this same thought was coming far more definitely and 
 far more persistently. He had been awake and sane 
 since shortly after noonday. The pain of a head which 
 ached throbbingly and of a body bruised and sore was 
 beginning to give place to a feeling merely of lassitude
 
 168 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 a languor which revisited incoherence upon him when 
 he tried to think. He shifted himself upon his bed and 
 called the nurse. 
 
 " How long am I likely to have to stay here? " he 
 asked her. 
 
 " The doctors think not less than two weeks, Mr. Con- 
 rad." 
 
 He realized, as he again lay silent, that he must put 
 out of his head now all expectation of ever finding in 
 Corvet's house any such record as he had been looking 
 for. If there had been a record, it unquestionably 
 would be gone before he could get about again to seek 
 it ; and he could not guard against its being taken from 
 the house ; for, if he had been hopeless of receiving 
 credence for any accusation he might make against 
 Spearman while he was in health, how much more hope- 
 less was it now, when everything he would say could be 
 put to the credit of his injury and to his delirium ! He 
 could not even give orders for the safeguarding of the 
 house and its contents his own property with 
 assurance that they would be carried out. 
 
 The police and hospital attendants, he had learned, 
 had no suspicion of anything but that he had been the 
 victim of one of the footpads who, during that month, 
 had been attacking and robbing nightly. Sherrill, 
 who had visited him about two o'clock, had showed that 
 he suspected no other possibility. Alan could not 
 prove otherwise ; he had not seen his assailant's face ; 
 it was most probable that if he had seen it, he would 
 not have recognized it. But the man who had assailed 
 him had meant to kill ; he had not been any ordinary 
 robber. That purpose, blindly recognized and fought 
 against by Alan in their struggle, had been unmistak-
 
 A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE 169 
 
 able. Only the chance presence of passers-by, who had 
 heard Alan's shouts and responded to them, had pre- 
 vented the execution of his purpose, and had driven the 
 man to swift flight for his own safety. 
 
 Alan had believed, in his struggle with Spearman in 
 Corvet's library, that Spearman might have killed 
 rather than have been discovered there. Were there 
 others to whom Alan's presence had become a threat so 
 serious that <they would proceed even to the length of 
 calculated murder? He could not know that. The 
 only safe plan was to assume that persons, in number 
 unknown, had definite, vital interest in his " removal " 
 by violence or otherwise, and that, among them, he 
 must reckon Henry Spearman ; and he must fight them 
 alone. For Sherrill's liking for him, even Constance 
 Sherrill's interest and sympathy were nullified in prac- 
 tical intent by their admiration for and their complete 
 confidence in Spearman. It did not matter that Alan 
 might believe that, in fighting Spearman, he was fight- 
 ing not only for himself but for her ; he knew now cer- 
 tainly that he must count her as Spearman's ; her ! 
 Things swam before him again dizzily as he thought of 
 her ; and he sank back and closed his eyes. 
 
 A little before six Constance Shcrrill and Spearman 
 called to inquire after him and were admitted for a few 
 moments to his room. She came to him, bent over him, 
 while she spoke the few words of sympathy the nurse 
 allowed to her; she stood back then while Spearman 
 spoke to him. In the succeeding days, he saw her 
 nearly every day, accompanied always by her father -or 
 Spearman; it was the full two weeks the nurse had 
 allotted for his remaining in the hospital before he saw 
 her alone.
 
 170 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 They had brought him home, the day before she 
 and her father, in the motor to the house on Astor 
 Street. He had insisted on returning there, refusing 
 the room in their house which they had offered ; but the 
 doctor had enjoined outdoors and moderate exercise 
 for him, and she had made him promise to come and 
 walk with her. He went to the Sherrill house about 
 ten o'clock, and they walked northward toward the 
 park. 
 
 It was a mild, sunny morning with warm wind from 
 the south, which sucked up the last patches of snow 
 from the lawns and dried the tiny trickles of water 
 across the walks. Looking to the land, one might sa^ 
 that spring soon would be on the way ; but, looking to 
 the lake, midwinter held. The counterscrap of con- 
 crete, beyond the withered sod that edged the Drive, 
 was sheathed in ice ; the frozen spray-hummocks beyond 
 steamed in the sun ; and out as far as one could see, floes 
 floated close together, exposing only here and there a 
 bit of blue. Wind, cold and chilling, wafted off this 
 ice field, taking the warm south breeze upon its flanks. 
 
 Glancing up at her companion from time to time. 
 Constance saw the color coming to his face, and he 
 strode beside her quite steadily. Whatever was his 
 inheritance, his certainly were stamina and vitality ; a 
 little less or a little dissipation of them and he 
 might not have recovered at all, much less have leaped 
 back to strength as he had done. For since yesterday, 
 the languor which had held him was gone. 
 
 They halted a minute near the south entrance of the 
 park at the St. Gaudens' " Lincoln," which he had not 
 previously seen. The gaunt, sad figure of the " rail- 
 splitter " in his ill-fitting clothes, seemed to recall some-
 
 A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE 171 
 
 thing to him; for he glanced swiftly at her as they 
 turned away. 
 
 " Miss Sherrill," he asked, " have you ever stayed out 
 in the country? " 
 
 " I go to northern Michigan, up by the straits, 
 almost every summer for part of the time, at least ; and 
 once in a while we open the house in winter too for a 
 week or so. It's quite wild trees and sand and shore 
 and the water. I've had some of my best times, up 
 there." 
 
 "You've never been out on the plains?" 
 
 " Just to pass over them on the train on the way to 
 the coast." 
 
 " That would be in winter or in spring ; I was think- 
 ing about the plains in late summer, when we Jim 
 and Betty, the children of the people I was with in 
 Kansas " 
 
 " I remember them." 
 
 " When we used to play at being pioneers in our 
 sunflower shacks." 
 
 "Sunflower shacks?" she questioned. 
 
 " I was dreaming we were building them again when 
 I was delirious just after I was hurt, it seems. I 
 thought that I was back in Kansas and was little again. 
 The prairie was all brown as it is in late summer, 
 brown billows of dried grass which let you see the chips 
 of limestone and flint scattered on the ground beneath ; 
 and in the hollows there were acres and acres of sun- 
 flowers, three times as tall as either Jim or I, and with 
 stalks as thick as a man's wrist, where Jim and Betty 
 and I ... and you, Miss Sherrill, were playing." 
 
 " I? " 
 
 "We cut paths through the sunflowers with a corn
 
 172 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 knife," Alan continued, not looking at her, " and built 
 houses in them by twining the cut stalks in and out 
 among those still standing. I'd wondered, you see, 
 what you must have been like when you were a little 
 girl, so, I suppose, when I was delirious, I saw you 
 that way." 
 
 She had looked up at him a little apprehensively, 
 afraid that he was going to say something more; but 
 his look reassured her. 
 
 " Then that," she hazarded, " must have been how 
 the hospital people learned our name. I'd wondered 
 about that; they said you were unconscious first, and 
 then delirious and when you spoke you said, among 
 other names, mine Connie and Sherrill." 
 
 He colored and glanced away. " I thought they 
 might have told you that, so I wanted you to know. 
 They say that in a dream, or in delirium, after your 
 brain establishes the first absurdity like your play- 
 ing out among the sunflowers with me when we were 
 little everything else is consistent. I wouldn't call 
 a little girl ' Miss Sherrill,' of course. Ever since I've 
 known you, I couldn't help thinking a great deal about 
 you ; you're not like any one else I've ever known. But 
 I didn't want you to think I thought of you 
 familiarly." 
 
 " I speak of you always as Alan to father," she 
 said. 
 
 He was silent for a moment. " They lasted hardly 
 for a day those sunflower houses, Miss Sherrill," he 
 said quietly. " They withered almost as soon as they 
 were made. Castles in Kansas, one might say! No 
 one could live in them." 
 
 Apprehensive again, she colored. He had recalled
 
 A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE 173 
 
 to her, without meaning to do so, she thought, that fie 
 had seen her in Spearman's arms; she was quite sure 
 that recollection of this was in his mind. But in spite 
 of this or rather, exactly because of it she under- 
 stood that he had formed his own impression of the 
 relation between Henry and herself and that, conse- 
 quently, he was not likely to say anything more like 
 this. 
 
 They had walked east, across the damp, dead turf 
 to where the Drive leaves the shore and is built out into 
 the lake; as they crossed to it on the smooth ice of 
 the lagoon between, he took her arm to steady her. 
 
 " There is somethirg I have been wanting to ask 
 you," she said. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " That night when you were hurt it was for rob- 
 bery, they said. What do you think about it?" She 
 watched him as he looked at her and then away ; but his 
 face was completely expressionless. 
 
 " The proceedings were a little too rapid for me to 
 judge, Miss Sherrill." 
 
 " But there was no demand upon you to give over 
 your money before you were attacked? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 She breathed a little more quickly. " It must be a 
 strange sensation," she observed, " to know that some 
 one has tried to kill you." 
 
 " It must, indeed." 
 
 " You mean you don't think that he tried to kill 
 you?" 
 
 " The police captain thinks not ; he says it was the 
 work of a man new to the blackjack, and he hit harder 
 and oftener than he needed. He says that sort are the
 
 174 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 dangerous ones that one's quite safe in the hands of 
 an experienced slugger, as you would be with the skil- 
 ful man in any line. I never thought of it that way 
 before. He almost made it into an argument for leav- 
 ing the trained artists loose on the streets, for the 
 safety of the public, instead of turning the business over 
 to boys only half educated." 
 
 " What do you think about the man yourself? " Con- 
 stance persisted. 
 
 " The apprentice who practiced on me? " 
 
 She waited, watching his eyes. " I was hardly in a 
 condition, Miss Sherrill, to appreciate anything about 
 the man at all. Why do you ask ? " 
 
 " Because " She hesitated an instant, " if you- 
 were attacked to be killed, it meant that you must have 
 been attacked as the son of Mr. Corvet. Then that 
 meant at least it implied, that Mr. Corvet was killed, 
 that he did not go away. You see that, of course." 
 
 " Were you the only one who thought that ? Or did 
 some one speak to you about it? " 
 
 " No one did ; I spoke to father. He thought " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, if Mr. Corvet was murdered I'm following 
 what father thought, you understand it involved 
 something a good deal worse perhaps than anything 
 that could have been involved if he had only gone away. 
 The facts we had made it certain that if what had 
 happened to him was death at the hands of another 
 he must have foreseen that death and, seeking no pro- 
 tection for himself ... it implied, that he preferred 
 to die rather than to ask protection that there was 
 something whose concealment he thought mattered even 
 more to him than life. It it might have meant that
 
 A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE 175 
 
 he considered his life was . . . due to whomever took 
 it." Her voice, which had become very low, now ceased. 
 She was speaking to Alan of his father a father 
 whom he had never known, and whom he could not have 
 recognized by sight until she showed him the picture a 
 few weeks before ; but she was speaking of his father. 
 
 " Mr. Sherrill didn't feel that it was necessary for 
 him to do anything, even though he thought that?" 
 
 " If Mr. Corvet was dead, we could do him no good, 
 surely, by telling this to the police; if the police suc- 
 ceeded in finding out all the facts, we would be doing 
 only what Uncle Benny did not wish what he pre- 
 ferred death to. We could not tell the police about it 
 without telling them all about Mr. Corvet too. So 
 father would not let himself believe that you had been 
 attacked to be killed. He had to believe the police 
 theory was sufficient." 
 
 Alan made no comment at once. " Wassaquam be- 
 lieves Mr. Corvet is dead," he said finally. " He told 
 me so. Does your father believe that? " 
 
 " I think he is beginning to believe it." 
 
 They had reached the little bridge that breaks the 
 Drive and spans the channel through which the motor 
 boats reach harbor in the lagoon ; he rested his arms 
 upon the rail of the bridge and looked down into the 
 channel, now frozen. He seemed to her to consider 
 and to decide upon something. 
 
 " I've not told any one," he said, now watching her, 
 " how I happened to be out of the house that night. I 
 followed a man who came there to the house. Wassa- 
 quam did not know his name. He did not know Mr. 
 Corvet was gone ; for he came there to see Mr. Corvet. 
 He was not an ordinary friend of Mr. Corvet's ; but he
 
 176 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 had come there often; Wassaquam did not know why. 
 Wassaquam had sent the man away, and I ran out after 
 him ; but I could not find him." 
 
 He stopped an instant, studying her. " That was 
 not the first man who came to the house," he went on 
 quickly, as she was about to speak. " I found a man 
 in Mr. Corvet's house the first night that I spent there. 
 Wassaquam was away, you remember, and I was alone 
 in the house." 
 
 " A man there in the house? " she repeated. 
 
 " He wasn't there when I entered the house at 
 least I don't think he was. I heard him below, after 
 I had gone up-stairs. I came down then and saw him. 
 He was going through Mr. Corvet's things not the 
 silver and all that, but through his desks and files and 
 cases. He was looking for something something 
 which he seemed to want very much ; when I interfered, 
 it greatly excited him." 
 
 They had turned back from the bridge and were re- 
 turning along the way that they had come ; but now 
 she stopped and looked up at him. 
 
 " What happened when you ' interfered '? " 
 
 " A queer thing." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I frightened him." 
 
 " Frightened him ? " She had appreciated in his 
 tone more significance than the casual meaning of the 
 words. 
 
 " He thought I was a ghost." 
 
 " A ghost. Whose ghost ? " 
 
 He shrugged. " I don't know ; some one whom he 
 seemed to have known pretty well and whom Mr. 
 Corvet knew, he thought."
 
 A WALK BESIDE THE LAKE 1TT 
 
 " Why didn't you tell us this before? " 
 
 " At least I am telling you now, Miss Sherrill. 
 I frightened him, and he got away. But I had seen him 
 plainly. I can describe him. . . . You've talked with 
 your father of the possibility that something might 
 * happen ' to me such as, perhaps, happened to Mr. 
 Corvet. If anything does happen to me, a description 
 of the man may . . . prove useful." 
 
 He saw the color leave her face, and her eyes 
 brighten ; he accepted this for agreement on her part. 
 Then clearly and definitely as he could, he described 
 Spearman to her. She did not recognize the descrip- 
 tion ; he had known she would not. Had not Spearman 
 been in Duluth? Beyond that, was not connection of 
 Spearman with the prowler in Corvet's house the one 
 connection of all most difficult for her to make? But 
 he saw her fixing and recording the description in her 
 mind. 
 
 They were silent as they went on toward her home. 
 He had said all he could, or dared to say; to tell her 
 that the man had been Spearman would not merely have 
 awakened her incredulity; it would have destroyed 
 credence utterly. A definite change in their relation to 
 one another had taken place during their walk. The 
 fullness, the frankness of the sympathy there had been 
 between them almost from their first meeting, had gone ; 
 she was quite aware, he saw, that he had not frankly 
 answered her questions ; she was aware that in some 
 way he had drawn back from her and shut her out from 
 his thoughts about his own position here. But he had 
 known that this must be so ; it had been his first definite 
 realization after his return to consciousness in the hos- 
 pital when, knowing now her relation to Spearman, he
 
 178 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 had found all questions which concerned his relations 
 with the people here made immeasurably more acute by 
 the attack upon him. 
 
 She asked him to come in and stay for luncheon, as 
 they reached her home, but she asked it without urging ; 
 at his refusal she moved slowly up the steps ; but she 
 halted when she saw that he did not go on. 
 
 " Miss Sherrill," he said, looking up at hcr, % " how 
 much money is there in your house? " 
 
 She smiled, amused and a little perplexed; then 
 sobered as she saw his intentness on her answer. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " she asked. 
 
 " I mean how much is ordinarily kept there? " 
 
 " Why, very little in actual cash. We pay every- 
 thing by check tradesmen and servants ; and even if 
 we happen not to have a charge account where we make 
 a purchase, they know who we are and are always will- 
 ing to charge it to us." 
 
 " Thank you. It would be rather unusual then for 
 you or your neighbors to have currency at hand 
 exceeding the hundreds ? " 
 
 " Exceeding the hundreds ? That means in the thou- 
 sands or at least one thousand ; yes, for us, it would 
 be quite unusual." 
 
 She waited for him to explain why he had asked; it 
 was not, she felt sure, for any reason which could read- 
 ily suggest itself to her. But he only thanked her again 
 and lifted his hat and moved away. Looking after him 
 from the window after she had entered the house, she 
 saw him turn the corner in the direction of Astor 
 Street.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 A CALLER 
 
 AS the first of the month was approaching, 
 Wassaquam had brought his household bills and 
 budget to Alan that morning directly after 
 breakfast. The accounts, which covered expenses for 
 the month just ending and a small amount of cash to 
 be carried for the month beginning, were written upon 
 a sheet of foolscap in neat, unshaded writing exactly 
 like the models in a copybook each letter formed as 
 carefully and precisely as is the work done upon an 
 Indian basket. The statement accounted accurately 
 for a sum of cash in hand upon the first of February, 
 itemized charged expenses, and totaled the bills. For 
 March, Wassaquam evidently proposed a continuance 
 of the establishment upon the present lines. To pro- 
 vide for that, and to furnish Alan with whatever sums 
 he needed, Sherrill had made a considerable deposit in 
 Alan's name in the bank where he carried his own ac- 
 count; and Alan had accompanied Sherrill to the bank 
 to be introduced and had signed the necessary cards 
 in order to check against the deposit; but, as yet, he 
 had drawn nothing. 
 
 Alan had required barely half of the hundred dollars 
 which Benjamin Corvet had sent to Blue Rapids, for 
 his expenses in Chicago; and he had brought with him 
 from " home " a hundred dollars of his own. He had
 
 180 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 used that for his personal expenses since. The amount 
 which Wassaquam now desired to pay the bills was 
 much more than Alan had on hand; but that amount 
 was also much less than the eleven hundred dollars 
 which the servant listed as cash on hand. This, Was- 
 saquam stated, was in currency and kept by him. Ben- 
 jamin always had had him keep that much in the house; 
 Wassaquam would not touch that sum now for the 
 payment of current expenses. 
 
 This sum of money kept inviolate troubled Alan. 
 Constance Sherrill's statement that, for her family at 
 least, to keep such a sum would have been unusual, 
 increased this trouble; it did not, however, preclude 
 the possibility that others than the Sherrills might 
 keep such amounts of cash on hand. On the first of 
 the month, therefore Alan drew upon his new bank 
 account to Wassaquam's order ; and in the early after- 
 noon Wassaquam went to the bank to cash his check 
 one of the very few occasions when Alan had been 
 left in the house alone ; Wassaquam's habit, it appeared, 
 was to go about on the first of the month and pay 
 the tradesmen in person. 
 
 Some two hours later, and before Wassaquam could 
 have been expected back, Alan, in the room which had 
 become his, was startled by a sound of heavy pound- 
 ing, which came suddenly to him from a floor below. 
 Shouts heavy, thick, and unintelligible mingled 
 with the pounding. He ran swiftly down the stairs, 
 then on and down the service stairs into the basement. 
 The door to the house from the areaway was shaking 
 to irregular, heavy blows, which stopped as Alan 
 reached the lower hallway ; the shouts continued still a 
 moment more. Now that the noise of pounding did not
 
 A CALLER 181 
 
 interfere, Alan could make out what the man was say- 
 ing : " Ben Corvet ! " the name was almost unintelli- 
 gible "Ben Corvet! Ben!" Then the shouts 
 stopped too. 
 
 Alan sped to the door and turned back the latch. 
 The door bore back upon him, not from a push, but 
 from a weight without which had fallen against it. A 
 big, heavy man, with a rough cap and mackinaw coat, 
 would have fallen upon the floor, if Alan had not 
 caught him. His weight in Alan's arms was so dull, so 
 inert that, if violence had been his intention, there was 
 nothing to be feared from him now. Alan looked up, 
 therefore, to see if any one had come with him. The 
 alley and the street were clear. The snow in the area- 
 way showed that the man had come to the door alone 
 and with great difficulty; he had fallen once upon the 
 walk. Alan dragged the man into the house and went 
 back and closed the door. 
 
 /He returned and looked at him. The man was like, 
 very like the one whom Alan had followed from the 
 house on the night when he was attacked; certainty 
 that this was the same man came quickly to him. He 
 seized the fellow again and dragged him up the stairs 
 and to the lounge in the library. The warmth revived 
 him; he sat up, coughing and breathing quickly and 
 with a loud, rasping wheeze. The smell of liquor was 
 strong upon him ; his clothes reeked with the unclean 
 smell of barrel houses. 
 
 He was, or had been, a very powerful man, broad and 
 thick through with overdeveloped almost distorting 
 muscles in his shoulders ; but his body had become fat 
 and soft, his face was puffed, and his eyes watery and 
 bright ; his brown hair, which was shot all through
 
 182 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 with gray, was dirty and matted ; he had three or four 
 days' growth of beard. He was clothed as Alan had 
 seen deck hands on the steamers attired ; he was not Jess 
 than fifty, Alan judged, though his condition made es- 
 timate difficult. When he sat up and looked about, it 
 was plain that whiskey was only one of the forces 
 working upon him the other was fever which burned 
 up and sustained him intermittently. 
 
 " 'Lo ! " he greeted Alan. " Where's shat damn In- 
 jin, hey? I knew Ben Corvet was shere knew he 
 was shere all time. 'Course he's shere; he got to be 
 shere. That's shright. You go get 'im ! " 
 
 " Who are you? " Alan asked. 
 
 "Say, who'r you? What t'hells syou doin' here? 
 Never see you before . . . go go get Ben Corvet. 
 Jus' say Ben Corvet, Lu luke's shere. Ben Corvet'll 
 know Lu luke all right; alwaysh, alwaysh knows 
 me. . . ." 
 
 "What's the matter with you?" Alan had drawn 
 back but now went to the man again. The first idea 
 that this might have been merely some old sailor who 
 had served Benjamin Corvet or, perhaps, had been a 
 comrade in the earlier days, had been banished by the 
 confident arrogance of the man's tone an arrogance 
 not to be explained, entirely, by whiskey or by the fever. 
 
 "How long have you been this way?" Alan de- 
 manded. "Where did you come from?" He put his 
 hand on the wrist ; it was very hot and dry ; the pulse 
 was racing, irregular ; at seconds it seemed to stop ; 
 for other seconds it was continuous. The fellow 
 coughed and bent forward. "What is it pneumo- 
 nia?" Alan tried to straighten him up. 
 
 " Gi' me drink ! ... Go get Ben Corvet, I tell you !
 
 A CALLER 183 
 
 . . . Get Ben Corvet quick! Say yous shear? 
 You get me Ben Corvet ; you better get Ben Corvet ; 
 you tell him Lu uke's here ; won't wait any more ; 
 goin' t'have my money now . . . sright away, your 
 shear? Kick me out s'loon ; I guess not no more. Ben 
 Corvet give me all money I want or I talk ! " 
 
 "Talk!" 
 
 " Syou know it ! I ain't goin'. . . ." He choked 
 up and tottered back ; Alan, supporting him, laid him 
 down and stayed beside him until his coughing and 
 choking ceased, and there was only the rattling rasp 
 of his breathing. When Alan spoke to him again, 
 Luke's eyes opened, and he narrated recent experiences 
 bitterly ; all were blamed to Ben Corvet's absence ; 
 Luke, who had been drinking heavily a few nights be- 
 fore, had been thrown out when the saloon was closed; 
 that was Ben Corvet's fault ; if Ben Corvet had been 
 around, Luke would have had money, all the money 
 any one wanted ; no one would have thrown out Luke 
 then. Luke slept in the snow, all wet. When he arose, 
 the saloon was open again, and he got more whis- 
 key, but not enough to get him warm. He hadn't been 
 warm since. That waj Ben Corvet's fault. Ben Cor- 
 vet better be 'round now; Luke wouldn't stand any 
 more. 
 
 Alan felt of the pulse again ; he opened the coat and 
 under-flannels and felt the heaving chest. He went to 
 the hall and looked in the telephone directory. He 
 remembered the name of the druggist on the corner of 
 Clark Street and he telephoned him, giving the number 
 on Astor Street. 
 
 " I want a doctor right away," he said. " Any good 
 doctor; the one that you can get quickest." The
 
 184 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 druggist promised that a physician would be there 
 within a quarter of an hour. Alan went back to Luke, 
 who was silent now except for the gasp of his breath; 
 he did not answer when Alan spoke to him, except to 
 ask for whiskey. Alan, gazing down at him, felt that 
 the man was dying; liquor and his fever had sustained 
 him only to bring him to the door; now the collapse 
 had come; the doctor, even if he arrived very soon, 
 could do no more than perhaps delay the end. Alan 
 went up-stairs and brought down blankets and put 
 them over Luke ; he cut the knotted laces of the soaked 
 shoes and pulled them off; he also took off the macki- 
 naw and the undercoat. The fellow, appreciating that 
 care was being given him, relaxed ; he slept deeply for 
 short periods, stirred and started up, then slept again. 
 Alan stood watching, a strange, sinking tremor shak- 
 ing him. This man had come there to make a claim 
 a claim which many times before, apparently, Ben- 
 jamin Corvet had admitted. Luke came to Ben Corvet 
 for money which he always got all he wanted 
 the alternative to giving which was that Luke would 
 "talk." Blackmail, that meant, of course; blackmail 
 which not only Luke had told of, but which Wassaquam 
 too had admitted, as Alan now realized. Money for 
 blackmail that was the reason for that thousand 
 dollars in cash which Benjamin Corvet always kept at 
 the house. 
 
 Alan turned, with a sudden shiver of revulsion, to- 
 ward his father's chair in place before the hearth; 
 there for hours each day his father had sat with a book 
 or staring into the fire, always with what this man 
 knew hanging over him, always arming against it with 
 the thousand dollars ready for this man, whenever he
 
 A CALLER 185 
 
 came. Meeting blackmail, paying blackmail for as 
 long as Wassaquam had been in the house, for as long 
 as it took to make the once muscular, powerful figure 
 of the sailor who threatened to " talk " into the swol- 
 len, whiskey-soaked hulk of the man dying now on the 
 lounge. 
 
 For his state that day, the man blamed Benjamin 
 Corvet. Alan, forcing himself to touch the swollen 
 face, shuddered at thought of the truth underlying 
 that accusation. Benjamin Corvet's act whatever 
 it might be that this man knew undoubtedly had de- 
 stroyed not only him who paid the blackmail but him 
 who received it; the effect of that act was still going 
 on, destroying, blighting. Its threat of shame was 
 not only against Benjamin Corvet; it threatened also 
 all whose names must be connected with Corvet's. 
 Alan had refused to accept any stigma in his relation- 
 ship with Corvet; but now he could not refuse to ac- 
 cept it. This shame threatened Alan; it threatened 
 also the Sherrills. Was it not because of this that 
 Benjamin Corvet had objected to Sherrill's name ap- 
 pearing with his own in the title of the ship-owning 
 firm? And was it not because of this that Corvet's 
 intimacy with Sherrill and his comradeship with Con- 
 stance had been alternated by times in which he had 
 frankly avoided them both? What Sherrill had told 
 Alan and even Corvet's gifts to him had not been able 
 to make Alan feel that without question Corvet was 
 his father, but now shame and horror were making him 
 feel it ; in horror at Corvet's act whatever it might 
 be and in shame at Corvet's cowardice, Alan was 
 thinking of Benjamin Corvet as his father. This 
 shame, this horror, were his inheritance.
 
 186 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 He left Luke and went to the window to see if the 
 doctor was coming. He had called the doctor because 
 in his first sight of Luke he had not recognized that 
 Luke was beyond the aid of doctors and because to 
 summon a doctor under such circumstances was the 
 right thing to do; but he had thought of the doctor 
 also as a witness to anything Luke might say. But 
 now did he want a witness ? He had no thought of 
 concealing anything for his own sake or for his fa- 
 ther's; but he would, at least, want the chance to de- 
 termine the circumstances under which it was to be 
 made public. 
 
 He hurried back to Luke. " What is it, Luke? " he 
 cried to him. "What can you tell? Listen! Luke 
 Luke, is it about the MiwaJca the Miwaka? 
 Luke!" 
 
 Luke had sunk into a stupor; Alan shook him and 
 shouted in his ear without awakening response. As 
 Alan straightened and stood hopelessly looking down 
 at him, the telephone bell rang sharply. Thinking it 
 might be something about the doctor, he went to it 
 and answered it. Constance Sherrill's voice came to 
 him ; her first words made it clear that she was at home 
 and had just come in. 
 
 " The servants tell me some one was making a dis- 
 turbance beside your house a while ago," she said, 
 " and shouting something about Mr. Corvet. Is there 
 something wrong there? Have you discovered some- 
 thing? " 
 
 He shook excitedly while, holding his hand over the 
 transmitter lest Luke should break out again and she 
 should hear it, he wondered what he should say to her. 
 He could think of nothing, in his excitement, which
 
 A CALLER 187 
 
 would reassure her and merely put her off; he was not 
 capable of controlling his voice so as to do that. 
 
 " Please don't ask me just now, Miss Sherrill," he 
 managed. " I'll tell you what I can later." 
 
 His reply, he recognized, only made her more certain 
 that there was something the matter, but he could not 
 add anything to it. He found Luke, when he went 
 back to him, still in coma; the blood-shot veins stood 
 out against the ghastly grayness of his face, and his 
 stertorous breathing sounded through the rooms. 
 
 Constance Sherrill had come in a few moments be- 
 fore from an afternoon reception; the servants told 
 her at once that something was happening at Mr. Cor- 
 vet's. They had heard shouts and had seen a man 
 pounding upon the door there, but they had not taken 
 it upon themselves to go over there. She had told 
 the chauffeur to wait with the motor and had run at 
 once to the telephone and called Alan; his attempt to 
 put her off made her certain that what had happened 
 was not finished but was still going on. Her anxiety 
 and the sense of their responsibility for Alan overrode 
 at once all other thought. She told the servants to 
 call her father at the office and tell him something was 
 wrong at Mr. Corvet's; then she called her maid and 
 hurried out to the motor. 
 
 " To Mr. Corvet's quickly ! " she directed. 
 
 Looking through the front doors of her car as it 
 turned into Astor Street, she saw a young man, carry- 
 ing a doctor's case, run up the steps of Corvet's house. 
 This, quite unreasonably since she had just talked with 
 Alan, added to her alarm; she put her hand on the 
 catch of the door and opened it a little so as to be
 
 188 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 ready to leave the car as soon as it stopped. As the 
 car drew to the curb, she sprang out, and stopped only 
 long enough to tell the chauffeur to be attentive and 
 to wait ready to come into the house, if he was called. 
 
 The man with the bag Constance recognized him 
 as a young doctor who was starting in practice in the 
 neighborhood was just being admitted as she and 
 her maid reached the steps. Alan stood holding the 
 door open and yet blocking entrance when she came 
 up. The sight of him told her that it was not phys- 
 ical hurt that happened to him, but his face showed 
 her there had been basis for her fright. 
 
 " You must not come in ! " he denied her ; but she 
 followed the doctor so that Alan could not close the 
 door upon her. He yielded then, and she and her maid 
 went on into the hall. 
 
 She started as she saw the figure upon the couch in 
 the library, and as the sound of its heavy breathing 
 reached her; and the wild fancy which had come to 
 her when the servants had told her of what was going 
 on a fancy that Uncle Benny had come back was 
 banished instantly. 
 
 Alan led her into the room across from the library. 
 
 " You shouldn't have come in," he said. " I 
 shouldn't have let you in ; but you saw him." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Do you know him?" 
 
 " Know him? " She shook her head. 
 
 " I mean, you've never seen him before ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " His name is Luke he speaks of himself by that 
 name. Did you ever hear my father mention a man 
 named Luke?"
 
 A CALLER 189 
 
 "No; never." 
 
 Luke's voice cut suddenly their conversation; the 
 doctor probably had given him some stimulant. 
 
 "Where'sh Ben Corvet? " Luke demanded arro- 
 gantly of the doctor. " You go get Ben Corvet ! 
 Tell Ben Corvet I want drink right away. Tell Ben 
 Corvet I want my thousan' dollar ... ! " 
 
 Constance turned swiftly to her maid. " Go out to 
 the car and wait for me," she commanded. 
 
 Luke's muffled, heavy voice went on; moments while 
 he fought for breath interrupted it. 
 
 "You hear me, you damn Injin! . . . You go tell 
 Ben Corvet I want my thousan' dollars, or I make it 
 two nex' time ! You hear me ; you go tell Ben Cor- 
 vet. . . . You let me go, you damn Injin!". . . 
 
 Through the doorway to the library they could see 
 the doctor force Luke back upon the couch; Luke 
 fought him furiously ; then, suddenly as he had stirred 
 to strength and fury, Luke collapsed again. His voice 
 went on a moment more, rapidly growing weaker : 
 
 " You tell Ben Corvet I want my money, or I'll tell. 
 He knows what I'll tell. . . . You don't know, you 
 Injin devil. . . . Ben Corvet knows, and I know. . . . 
 Tell him I'll tell . . . I'll tell . . . I'll tell!" The 
 threatening voice stopped suddenly. 
 
 Constance, very pale, again faced Alan. " Of 
 course, I understand," she said. " Uncle Benny has 
 been paying blackmail to this man. For years, per- 
 haps. . . ." She repeated the word after an instant, 
 in a frightened voice, " Blackmail ! " 
 
 " Won't you please go, Miss Sherrill ? " Alan urged 
 her. " It was good of you to come ; but you mustn't 
 stay now. He's he's dying, of course."
 
 190 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 She seated herself upon a chair. " I'm going to 
 stay with you," she said simply. It was not, she knew, 
 to share the waiting for the man in the next room to 
 die; in that, of itself, there could be nothing for him 
 to feel. It was to be with him while realization which 
 had come to her was settling upon him too realiza- 
 tion of what this meant to him. He was realizing that, 
 she thought; he had realized it; it made him, at mo- 
 ments, forget her while, listening for sounds from the 
 other room, he paced back and forth beside the table 
 x or stood staring away, clinging to the portieres. He 
 left her presently, and went across the hall to the doc- 
 tor. The man on the couch had stirred as though to 
 start up again ; the voice began once more, but now its 
 words were wholly indistinguishable, meaningless, in- 
 coherent. They stopped, and Luke lay still; the doc- 
 tor Alan was helping him now arranged a quite 
 inert form upon the couch. The doctor bent over 
 him. 
 
 "Is he dead?" Constance heard Alan ask. 
 
 "Not yet," the doctor answered; "but it won't be 
 long, now." 
 
 " There's nothing you can do for him ? " 
 
 The doctor shook his head. 
 
 " There's nothing you can do to make him talk 
 bring him to himself enough so that he will tell what 
 he keeps threatening to tell?" 
 
 The doctor shrugged. " How many times, do you 
 suppose, he's been drunk and still not told? Conceal- 
 ment is his established habit now. It's an inhibition; 
 even in wandering, he stops short of actually telling 
 anything." 
 
 " He came here " Alan told briefly to the doctor
 
 A CALLER 191 
 
 the circumstances of the man's coming. The doctor 
 moved back from the couch to a chair and sat down. 
 
 " I'll wait, of course," he said, " until it's over. He 
 seemed to want to say something else, and after a 
 moment he came out with it. " You needn't be afraid 
 of my talking outside . . . professional secrecy, of 
 course." 
 
 Alan came back to Constance. Outside, the gray of 
 dusk was spreading, and within the house it had grown 
 dark ; Constance heard the doctor turn on a light, and 
 the shadowy glow of a desk lamp came from the library. 
 Alan walked to and fro with uneven steps ; he did not 
 speak to her, nor she to him. It was very quiet in the 
 library ; she could not even hear Luke's breathing now. 
 Then she heard the doctor moving; Alan went to the 
 light and switched it on, as the doctor came out to 
 them. 
 
 " It's over," he said to Alan. " There's a law cov- 
 ers these cases; you may not be familiar with it. I'll 
 make out the death certificate pneumonia and a 
 weak heart with alcoholism. But the police have to be 
 notified at once; you have no choice as to that. I'll 
 look after those things for you, if you want." 
 
 " Thank you ; if you will." Alan went with the doc- 
 tor to the door and saw him drive away. Returning, 
 he ' drew the library portieres ; then, coming back to 
 Constance, he picked up her muff and collar from the 
 chair where she had thrown them, and held them out 
 to her, 
 
 " You'll go now, Miss Sherrill," he said. " Indeed, 
 you mustn't stay here your car's still waiting, and 
 you mustn't stay here ... in this house ! " 
 
 He was standing, waiting to open the door for her,
 
 192 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 almost where he had halted on that morning, a few 
 weeks ago, when he had first come to the house in an- 
 swer to Benjamin Corvet's summons; and she was 
 where she had stood to receive him. Memory of how 
 he had looked then eager, trembling a little with 
 excitement, expecting only to find his father and hap- 
 piness came to her ; and as it contrasted with the 
 way she saw him now, she choked queerly as she tried 
 to speak. He was very white, but quite controlled; 
 lines not upon his face before had come there. 
 
 " Won't you come over home with me," she said, 
 " and wait for father there till we can think this thing 
 out together?" 
 
 Her sweetness almost broke him down. " This . . . 
 together! Think this out! Oh, it's plain enough, 
 isn't it? For years for as long as Wassaquam has 
 been here, my father has been seeing that man and 
 paying blackmail to him twice a year, at least! He 
 lived in that man's power. He kept money in the house 
 for him always ! It wasn't anything imaginary that 
 hung over my father or anything created in his own 
 mind. It was something real real ; it was disgrace 
 disgrace and worse something he deserved ; and 
 that he fought with blackmail money, like a coward ! 
 Dishonor cowardice blackmail ! " 
 
 She drew a little nearer to him. " You didn't want 
 me to know," she said. " You tried to put me off when 
 I called you on the telephone ; and when I came 
 here, you wanted me to go away before I heard. Why 
 didn't you want me to know? If he was your father, 
 wasn't he our friend ? Mine and my father's ? 
 You must let us help you." 
 
 As she approached, he had drawn back from her.
 
 A CALLER 193 
 
 " No ; this is mine ! " he denied her. " Not yours or 
 your father's. You have nothing to do with this. 
 Didn't he try in little cowardly ways to keep you out 
 of it? But he couldn't do that; your friendship meant 
 too much to him; he couldn't keep away from you. 
 But I can I can do that ! You must go out of this 
 house ; you must never come in here again ! " 
 
 Her eyes filled, as she watched him; never had she 
 liked him so much as now, as he moved to open the door 
 for her. 
 
 " I thought," he said almost wistfully, " it seemed 
 to me that, whatever he had done, it must have been 
 mostly against me. His leaving everything to me 
 seemed to mean that I was the one that he had 
 wronged, and that he was trying to make it up to me. 
 But it isn't that ; it can't be that ! It is something 
 much worse than that! . . . Oh, I'm glad I haven't 
 used much of his money ! Hardly any not more 
 than I can give back! It wasn't the money and the 
 house he left me that mattered ; what he really left me 
 was just this . . . dishonor, shame . . ." 
 
 The doorbell rang, and Alan turned to the door and 
 threw it open. In the dusk the figure of the man out- 
 side was not at all recognizable; but as he entered 
 with heavy and deliberate steps, passing Alan without 
 greeting and going straight to Constance, Alan saw 
 by the light in the hall that it was Spearman. 
 
 "What's up?" Spearman asked. "They tried to 
 get your father at the office and then me, but neither 
 of us was there. They got me afterwards at the club. 
 They said you'd come over here; but that must have 
 been more than two hours ago." 
 
 His gaze went on past her to the drawn hangings of
 
 194 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 the room to the right; and he seemed to appreciate 
 their significance; for his face whitened under its tan, 
 and an odd hush came suddenly upon him. 
 
 " Is it Ben, Connie? " he whispered. *' Ben . . . 
 come back? " 
 
 He drew the curtains partly open. The light in 
 the library had been extinguished, and the light that 
 came from the hall swayed about the room with the 
 movement of the curtains and gave a momentary sem- 
 blance of life to the face of the man upon the couch. 
 Spearman drew the curtains quickly together again, 
 still holding to them and seeming for an instant to 
 cling to them; then he shook himself together, threw 
 the curtains wide apart, and strode into the room. 
 He switched on the light and went directly to the 
 couch; Alan followed him. 
 
 "He's dead?" 
 
 " Who is he? " Alan demanded. 
 
 Spearman seemed to satisfy himself first as to the 
 answer to his question. " How should I know who he 
 is ? " he asked. " There used to be a wheelsman on the 
 Martha Corvet years ago who looked like him; or 
 looked like what this fellow may have looked like once. 
 I can't be sure." 
 
 He turned to Constance. " You're going home, 
 Connie? I'll see you over there. I'll come back about 
 this afterward, Conrad." 
 
 Alan followed them to the door and closed it after 
 them. He spread the blankets over Luke. Luke's 
 coats, which Alan had removed, lay upon a chair, 
 and he looked them over for marks of identifica- 
 tion; the mackinaw bore the label of a dealer in 
 Manitowoc wherever that might be; Alan did not
 
 A CALLER , 195 
 
 know. A side pocket produced an old briar: there 
 was nothing else. Then Alan walked restlessly about, 
 awaiting Spearman. Spearman, he believed, knew this 
 man ; Spearman had not even ventured upon modified 
 denial until he was certain that the man was dead ; and 
 then he had answered so as not to commit himself, pend- 
 ing learning from Constance what Luke had told. 
 
 But Luke had said nothing about Spearman. It 
 had been Corvet, and Corvet alone, of whom Luke had 
 spoken ; it was Corvet whom he had accused ; it was 
 Corvet who had given him money. Was it conceiv- 
 able, then, that there had been two such events in Cor- 
 vet's life? That one of these events concerned the 
 Miwaka and Spearman and some one some one 
 " with a bullet hole above his eye " who had " got " 
 Corvet; and that the other event had concerned Luke 
 and something else? It was not conceivable, Alan was 
 sure; it was all one thing. If Corvet had had to do 
 with the Miwaka, then Luke had had to do with it too. 
 And Spearman? But if Spearman had been involved 
 in that guilty thing, had not Luke known it? Then 
 why had not Luke mentioned Spearman? Or had 
 Spearman not been really involved? Had it been, 
 perhaps, only evidence of knowledge of what Corvet 
 had done that Spearman had tried to discover and 
 destroy ? 
 
 Alan went to the door and opened it, as he heard 
 Spearman upon the steps again. Spearman waited 
 only until the door had been reclosed behind him. 
 
 " Well, Conrad, what was the idea of bringing Miss 
 Sherrill into this?" 
 
 " I didn't bring her in ; I tried the best I could to 
 keep her out."
 
 196 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " Out of what exactly? " 
 
 " You know better than I do. You know exactly 
 what it is. You know that man, Spearman ; you 
 know what he came here for. I don't mean money; I 
 mean you know why he came here for money, and why 
 he got it. I tried, as well as I could, to make him tell 
 me; but he wouldn't do it. There's disgrace of some 
 sort here, of course disgrace that involves my father 
 and, I think, you too. If you're not guilty with my 
 father, you'll help me now ; if you are guilty, then, at 
 least, your refusal to help will let me know that." 
 
 " I don't know what you're talking about." 
 
 " Then why did you come back here ? You came 
 back here to protect yourself in some way." 
 
 " I came back, you young fool, to say something 
 to you which I didn't want Miss Sherrill to hear. I 
 didn't know, when I took her away, how completely 
 you'd taken her into your father's affairs. I told 
 you this man may have been a wheelsman on the Cor- 
 vet; I don't know more about him than that; I don't 
 even know that certainly. Of course, I knew Ben Cor- 
 vet was paying blackmail; I've known for years that 
 he was giving up money to some one. I don't know 
 who he paid it to; or for what." 
 
 The strain of the last few hours was telling upon 
 Alan; his skin flushed hot and cold by turns. He 
 paced up and down while he controlled himself. 
 
 "That's not enough, Spearman," he said finally. 
 "I I've felt you, somehow, underneath all these 
 things. The first time I saw you, you were in this 
 house doing something you ought not to have been do- 
 ing; you fought me then; you would have killed me 
 rather than not get away. Two weeks ago, some one
 
 A CALLER 197 
 
 attacked me on the street for robbery, they said; 
 but I know it wasn't robbery = " 
 
 " You're not so crazy as to be trying to involve me 
 in that" 
 
 There came a sound to them from the hall, a sound 
 unmistakably denoting some presence. Spearman 
 jerked suddenly up ; Alan, going to the door and look- 
 ing into the hall, saw Wassaquam. The Indian evi- 
 dently had returned to the house some time before; he 
 had been bringing to Alan now the accounts which he 
 had settled. He seemed to have been standing in the 
 hall for some time, listening; but he came in now, 
 looking inquiringly from one to the other of them. 
 
 " Not friends? " he inquired. " You and Henry? " 
 
 Alan's passion broke out suddenly. " We're any- 
 thing but that, Judah. I found him, the first night I 
 got here and while you were away, going through my 
 father's things. I fought with him, and he ran away. 
 He was the one that broke into my father's desks; 
 maybe you'll believe that, even if no one else will." 
 
 "Yes?" the Indian questioned. "Yes?" It was 
 plain that he not only believed but that believing gave 
 him immense satisfaction. He took Alan's arm and 
 led him into the smaller library. He knelt before one 
 of the drawers under the bookshelves the drawer, 
 Alan recalled, which he himself had been examining 
 when he had found Wassaquam watching him. He 
 drew out the drawer and dumped its contents out upon 
 the floor ; he turned the drawer about then, and pulled 
 the bottom out of it. Beneath the bottom which he 
 had removed appeared now another bottom and^ a few 
 sheets of paper scrawled in an uneven hand and with 
 different colored inks.
 
 198 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 At sight of them, Spearman, who had followed them 
 into the room, uttered an oath and sprang forward. 
 The Indian's small dark hand grasped Spearman's 
 wrist, and his face twitched itself into a fierce grin 
 which showed how little civilization had modified in 
 him the aboriginal passions. But Spearman did not 
 try to force his way; instead, he drew back suddenly. 
 
 Alan stooped and picked up the papers and put them 
 in his pocket. If the Indian had not been there, it 
 would not have been so easy for him to do that, he 
 thought.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE LAND OF THE DRUM 
 
 ALAN went with Wassaquam into the front 
 library, after the Indian had shown Spearman 
 out. 
 
 " This was the man, Judah, who came for Mr. Cor- 
 vet that night I was hurt?" 
 
 " Yes, Alan," Wassaquam said. 
 
 " He was the man, then, who came here twice a year, 
 at least, to see Mr. Corvet." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I was sure of it," Alan said. Wassaquam had 
 made no demonstration of any sort since he had 
 snatched at Spearman's wrist to hold him back when 
 Alan had bent to the drawer. Alan could define no 
 real change now in the Indian's manner; but he knew 
 that, since Wassaquam had found him quarreling with 
 Spearman, the Indian somehow had " placed " him 
 more satisfactorily. The reserve, bordering upon dis- 
 trust, with which Wassaquam had observed Alan, cer- 
 tainly was lessened. It was in recognition of this that 
 Alan now asked, " Can you tell me now why he came 
 here, Judah?" 
 
 " I have told you I do not know," Wassaquam re- 
 plied. " Ben always saw him ; Ben gave him money. 
 I do not know why."
 
 200 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Alan had been holding his hand over the papers 
 which he had thrust into his pocket ; he went back into 
 the smaller library and spread them under the reading 
 lamp to examine them. Sherrill had assumed that 
 Corvet had left in the house a record which would fully 
 explain what had thwarted his life, and would shed 
 light upon what had happened to Corvet, and why he 
 had disappeared; Alan had accepted this assumption. 
 The careful and secret manner in which these pages 
 had been kept, and the importance which Wassaquam 
 plainly had attached to them and which rr._: have 
 been a result of his knowing that Corvet regarded 
 them of the utmost importance made Alan certain 
 that he had found the record which Sherrill had be- 
 lieved must be there. Spearman's manner, at the mo- 
 ment of discovery, showed too that this had been what 
 he had been searching for in his secret visit to the 
 house. 
 
 But, as Alan looked the pages over now, he felt a 
 chill of disappointment and chagrin. They did not 
 contain any narrative concerning Benjamin Corvet's 
 life; they did not even relate to a single event. They 
 were no narrative at all. They were in his first 
 examination of them, he could not tell what they were. 
 
 They consisted in all of some dozen sheets of irregu- 
 lar size, some of which had been kept much longer than 
 others, a few of which even appeared fresh and new. 
 The three pages which Alan thought, from their yel- 
 lowed and worn look, must be the oldest, and which 
 must have been kept for many years, contained only a 
 list of names and addresses. Having assured himself 
 that there was nothing else on them, he laid them aside. 
 The remaining pages, which he counted as ten in num-
 
 THE LAND OF THE DRUM 201 
 
 ber, contained nearly a hundred brief clippings from 
 newspapers ; the clippings had been very carefully cut 
 out, they had been pasted with painful regularity on 
 the sheets, and each had been dated across its face 
 dates made with many different pens and with many 
 different inks, but all in the same irregular handwrit- 
 ing as the letter which Alan had received from Benja- 
 min Corvet. 
 
 Alan, his fingers numb in his disappointment, turned 
 and examined all these pages ; but they contained noth- 
 ing else. He read one of the clippings, which was 
 dated " Feb. 1912." 
 
 The passing away of one of the oldest residents of 
 Emmet county occurred at the poor farm on Thurs- 
 day of last week. Mr. Fred Westhouse was one of 
 four brothers brought by their parents into Emmet 
 county in 1846. He established himself here as a 
 farmer and was well known among our people for 
 many years. He was nearly the last of his family, 
 which was quite well off at one time, Mr. Westhouse's 
 three brothers and his father having perished in various 
 disasters upon the lake. His wife died two years ago. 
 He is survived bv a daughter, Mrs. Arthur Pearl, of 
 Flint. 
 
 He read another: 
 
 Hallford-Spens. On Tuesday last Miss Audrey 
 Hallford, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bert Hallford, of 
 this place, was united in the bonds of holy matrimony 
 to Mr. Robert Spens, of Escanaba. Miss Audrey is 
 one of our most popular young ladies and was valedic- 
 torian of her class at the high school graduation last 
 year. All wish the young couple well.
 
 202 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 He read another: 
 
 Born to Mr. and Mrs. Hal French, a daughter, 
 Saturday afternoon last. Miss Vera Arabella French, 
 at her arrival weighed seven and one-half pounds. 
 
 This clipping was dated, in Benjamin Corvet's hand, 
 " Sturgeon Bay, Wis., Aug. 1914." Alan put it aside 
 in bewilderment and amaze and took up again the 
 sheets he first had looked at. The names and ad- 
 dresses on these oldest, yellowed pages had been first 
 written, it was plain, all at the same time and with the 
 same pen and ink, and each sheet in the beginning had 
 contained seven or eight names. Some of these orig- 
 inal names and even the addresses had been left un- 
 changed, but most of them had been scratched out and 
 altered many times other and quite different names 
 had been substituted; the pages had become finally 
 almost illegible, crowded scrawls, rewritten again and 
 again in Corvet's cramped hand. Alan strained for- 
 ward, holding the first sheet to the light. 
 
 Alan seized the clippings he had looked at before 
 and compared them swiftly with the page he had just 
 read ; two of the names Westhouse and French 
 were the same as those upon this list. Suddenly he 
 grasped the other pages of the list and looked them 
 through for his own name; but it was not there. He 
 dropped the sheets upon the table and got up and 
 began to stride about the room. 
 
 He felt that in this list and in these clippings there 
 must be, somehow, some one general meaning they 
 must relate in some way to one thing; they must have 
 deeply, intensely concerned Benjamin Corvet's disap- 
 pearance and his present fate, whatever that might be,
 
 <uJ*L f?U L^.,^ fa 
 
 _ ._ _ L~ I " * l/ 
 
 * v\jm 
 
 uu <J^ % A^L
 
 THE LAND OF THE DRUM 203 
 
 and they must concern Alan's fate as well. But in 
 their disconnection, their incoherence, he could discern 
 no common thread. What conceivable bond could there 
 have been uniting Benjamin Corvet at once with an old 
 man dying upon a poor farm in Emmet County, wher- 
 ever that might be, and with a baby girl, now some two 
 years old, in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin? He bent sud- 
 denly and swept the pages into the drawer of the table 
 and reclosed the drawer, as he heard the doorbell ring 
 and Wassaquam went to answer it. It was the police, 
 Wassaquam came to tell him, who had come for Luke's 
 body. 
 
 Alan went out into the hall to meet them. The 
 coroner's man either had come with them or had ar- 
 rived at the same time ; he introduced himself to Alan, 
 and his inquiries made plain that the young doctor 
 whom Alan had called for Luke had fully carried out 
 his offer to look after these things, for the coroner 
 was already supplied with an account of what had 
 taken place. A sailor formerly employed on the Cor- 
 vet ships, the coroner's office had been told, had come 
 to the Corvet house, ill and seeking aid; Mr. Corvet 
 not being at home, the people of the house had taken 
 the man in and called the doctor; but the man had 
 been already beyond doctors' help and had died in a 
 few hours of pneumonia and alcoholism; in Mr. Cor- 
 vet's absence it had been impossible to learn the sailor's 
 full name. 
 
 Alan left corroboration of this story mostly to Was- 
 saquam, the servant's position in the house being more 
 easily explicable than his own; but he found that his 
 right there was not questioned, and that the police 
 accepted him as a member of the household. He sus-
 
 204 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 pected that they did not think it necessary to push 
 inquiry very actively in such a home as this. 
 
 After the police had gone, he called Wassaquam into 
 the library and brought the lists and clippings out 
 again. 
 
 " Do you know at all what these are, Judah ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " No, Alan. I have seen Ben have them, and take 
 them out and put them back. That is all I know." 
 
 " My father never spoke to you about them ? " 
 
 " Once he spoke to me ; he said I was not to tell or 
 speak of them to any one, or even to him." 
 
 " Do you know any of these people? " 
 
 He gave the lists to Wassaquam, who studied them 
 through attentively, holding them to the lamp. 
 
 " No, Alan." 
 
 " Have you ever heard any of their names before? " 
 
 " That may be. I do not know. They are common 
 names." 
 
 " Do you know the places ? " 
 
 "Yes the places. They are lake ports or little 
 villages on the lakes. I have been in most of them, 
 Alan. Emmet County, Alan, I came from there. 
 Henry comes from there too." 
 
 "Henry Spearman?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then that is where they hear the Drum." * 
 
 " Yes, Alan." 
 
 " My father took newspapers from those places, did 
 he not?" 
 
 Wassaquam looked over the addresses again. 
 " Yes ; from all. He took them for the shipping news, 
 he said. And sometimes he cut pieces out of them
 
 THE LAND OF THE DRUM 205 
 
 these pieces, I see now; and afterward I burned the 
 papers; he would not let me only throw them away." 
 
 " That's all you know about them, Judah? " 
 
 "Yes, Alan; that is all." 
 
 Alan dismissed the Indian, who, stolidly methodical 
 in the midst of these events, went down-stairs and 
 commenced to prepare a dinner which Alan knew he 
 could not eat. Alan got up and moved about the 
 rooms ; he went back and looked over the lists and clip- 
 pings once more; then he moved about again. How 
 strange a picture of his father did these things call 
 up to him! When he had thought of Benjamin Corvet 
 before, it had been as Sherrill had described him, pur- 
 sued by some thought he could not conquer, seeking 
 relief in study, in correspondence with scientific socie- 
 ties, in anything which could engross him and shut 
 out memory. But now he must think of him, not 
 merely as one trying to forget; what had thwarted 
 Corvet's life was not only in the past; it was some- 
 thing still going on. It had amazed Sherrill to learn 
 that Corvet, for twenty years, had kept trace of Alan ; 
 but Corvet had kept trace in the same way and with 
 the same secrecy of many other people of about a 
 score of people. When Alan thought of Corvet, alone 
 here in his silent house, he must think of him as solic- 
 itous about these people; as seeking for their names in 
 the newspapers which he took for that purpose, and as 
 recording the changes in their lives. The deaths, the 
 births, the marriages among these people had been of 
 the intensest interest to Corvet. 
 
 It was possible that none of these people knew 
 about Corvet; Alan had not known about him in Kan- 
 sas, but had known only that some unknown person
 
 206 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 had sent money for his support. But he appreciated 
 that it did not matter whether they knew about him 
 or not ; for at some point common to all of them, the 
 lives of these people must have touched Corvet's life. 
 When Alan knew what had been that point of con- 
 tact, he would know about Corvet; he would know 
 about himself. 
 
 Alan had seen among Corvet's books a set of charts 
 of the Great Lakes. He went and got that now and 
 an atlas. Opening them upon the table, he looked up 
 the addresses given on Corvet's list. They were most 
 of them, he found, towns about the northern end of 
 the lake ; a very few were upon other lakes Superior 
 and Huron but most were upon or very close to Lake 
 Michigan. These people lived by means of the lake; 
 they got their sustenance from it, as Corvet had lived, 
 and as Corvet had got his wealth. Alan was feeling 
 like one who, bound, has been suddenly unloosed. 
 From the time when, coming to see Corvet, he had 
 found Corvet gone until now, he had felt the impossi- 
 bility of explaining from anything he knew or seemed 
 likely to learn the mystery which had surrounded him- 
 self and which had surrounded Corvet. But these 
 names and addresses ! They indeed offered something 
 to go upon, though Luke now was forever still, and 
 his pockets had told Alan nothing. 
 
 He found Emmet County on the map and put his fin- 
 ger on it. Spearman, Wassaquam had said came 
 from there. " The Land of the Drum ! " he said aloud. 
 Deep and sudden feeling stirred in him as he traced out 
 this land on the chart the little towns and villages, 
 the islands and headlands, their lights and their uneven 
 shores. A feeling of " home " had come to him, a
 
 THE LAND OF THE DRUM 207 
 
 feeling he had not had on coming to Chicago. There 
 were Indian names and French up there about the 
 meetings of the great waters. Beaver Island! He 
 thought of Michabou and the raft. The sense that 
 he was of these lakes, that surge of feeling which he 
 had felt first in conversation with Constance Sherrill 
 was strengthened an hundredfold; he found himself 
 humming a tune. He did not know where he had heard 
 it ; indeed, it was not the sort of tune which one knows 
 from having heard ; it was the sort which one just 
 knows. A rhyme fitted itself to the hum, 
 
 " Seagull, seagull sit on the sand, 
 It's never fair weather when you're on the land." 
 
 He gazed down at the lists of names which Benja- 
 min Corvet had kept so carefully and so secretly; 
 these were his father's people too ; these ragged shores 
 and the islands studding the channels were the lands 
 where his father had spent the most active part of his 
 life. There, then these lists now made it certain 
 that event had happened by which that life had 
 been blighted. Chicago and this house here had been 
 for his father only the abode of memory and retribu- 
 tion. North, there by the meeting of the waters, was 
 the region of the wrong which was done. 
 
 " That's where I must go ! " he said aloud. " That's 
 where I must go ! " 
 
 Constance Sherrill, on the following afternoon, re- 
 ceived a telephone call from her father; he was coming 
 home earlier than usual, he said ; if she had planned to 
 go out, would she wait until after he got there? She 
 had, indeed, just come in and had been intending to go
 
 208 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 out again at once; but she took off her wraps and 
 waited for him. The afternoon's mail was upon a 
 stand in the hall. She turned it over, looking through 
 it invitations, social notes. She picked from among 
 them an envelope addressed to herself in a firm, clear 
 hand, which, unfamiliar to her, still queerly startled 
 her, and tore it open. 
 
 Dear Miss Sherrill, she read, 
 
 I am closing for the time being, the house which, 
 for default of other ownership, I must call mine. The 
 possibility that what has occurred here would cause you 
 and your father anxiety about me in case I went away 
 without telling you of my intention is the reason for 
 this note. But it is not the only reason. I could not 
 go away without telling you how deeply I appreciate 
 the generosity and delicacy you and your father have 
 shown to me in spite of my position here and of the 
 fact that I had no claim at all upon you. I shall not 
 forget those even though what happened here last 
 night makes it impossible for me to try to see you again 
 or even to write to you. 
 
 ALAN CONEAD. 
 
 She heard her father's motor enter the drive and 
 ran to him with the letter in her hand. 
 
 " He's written to you then," he said, at sight of it. 
 
 Yes." 
 
 " I had a note from him this afternoon at the office, 
 asking me to hold in abeyance for the time being the 
 trust that Ben had left me and returning the key of 
 the house to me for safekeeping." 
 
 " Has he already gone? " 
 
 " I suppose so ; I don't know."
 
 THE LAND OF THE DRUM 209 
 
 " We must find out." She caught up her wraps and 
 began to put them on. Sherrill hesitated, then as- 
 sented ; and they went round the block together to the 
 Corvet house. The shades, Constance saw as they ap- 
 proached, were drawn; their rings at the doorbell 
 brought no response. Sherrill, after a few instants' 
 hesitation, took the key from his pocket and unlocked 
 the door and they went in. The rooms, she saw, were 
 all in perfect order ; summer covers had been put upon 
 the furniture; protecting cloths had been spread over 
 the beds up-stairs. Her father tried the water and the 
 gas, and found they had been turned off. After their 
 inspection, they came out again at the front door, 
 and her father closed it with a snapping of the spring 
 lock. 
 
 Constance, as they walked away, turned and looked 
 back at the old house, gloomy and dark among its 
 newer, fresher-looking neighbors ; and suddenly she 
 choked, and her eyes grew wet. That feeling was not 
 for Uncle Benny ; the drain of days past had exhausted 
 such a surge of feeling for him. That which she could 
 not wink away was for the boy who had come to that 
 house a few weeks ago and for the man who just now 
 had gone.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE THINGS FROM COEVET'S POCKETS 
 
 "Miss Constance Sherrill, 
 
 Harbor Springs, Michigan." 
 
 THE address, in large scrawling letters, was writ- 
 ten across the brown paper of the package 
 which had been brought from the post office in 
 the little resort village only a few moments before. 
 The paper covered a shoe box, crushed and old, bear- 
 ing the name of S. Klug, Dealer in Fine Shoes, Mani- 
 towoc, Wisconsin. The box, like the outside wrap- 
 ping, was carefully tied with string. 
 
 Constance, knowing no one in Manitowoc and sur- 
 prised at the nature of the package, glanced at the 
 postmark on the brown paper which she had removed; 
 it too was stamped Manitowoc. She cut the strings 
 about the box and took off the cover. A black and 
 brown dotted silk cloth filled the box; and, seeing it, 
 Constance caught her breath. It was at least it 
 was very like the muffler which Uncle Benny used 
 to wear in winter. Remembering him most vividly as 
 she had seen him last, that stormy afternoon when he 
 had wandered beside the lake, carrying his coat until 
 she made him put it on, she recalled this silk cloth, or 
 one just like it, in his coat pocket; she had taken it 
 from his pocket and put it around his neck. 
 
 She started with trembling fingers to take it from
 
 THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS 211 
 
 the box ; then, realizing from the weight of the package 
 that the cloth was only a wrapping or, at least, that 
 other things were in the box, she hesitated and looked 
 around for her mother. But her mother had gone out ; 
 her father and Henry both were in Chicago; she was 
 alone in the big summer " cottage," except for serv- 
 ants. Constance picked up box and wrapping and ran 
 up to her room. She locked the door and put the box 
 upon the bed; now she lifted out the cloth. It was a 
 wrapping, for the heavier things came with it; and 
 now, also, it revealed itself plainly as the scarf 
 Uncle Benny's scarf! A paper fluttered out as she 
 began to unroll it a little cross-lined leaf evidently 
 torn from a pocket memorandum book. It had been 
 folded and rolled up. She spread it out ; writing was 
 upon it, the small irregular letters of Uncle Benny's 
 hand. 
 
 " Send to Alan Conrad," she read ; there followed a 
 Chicago address the number of Uncle Benny's house 
 on Astor Street. Below this was another line: 
 
 " Better care of Constance Sherrill (Miss)." There 
 followed the Sherrills' address upon the Drive. And to 
 this was another correction: 
 
 " Not after June 12th ; then to Harbor Springs, 
 Mich. Ask some one of that ; be sure the date ; after 
 June 12th." 
 
 Constance, trembling, unrolled the scarf; now coins 
 showed from a fold, next a pocket knife, ruined and 
 rusty, next a watch a man's large gold watch with 
 the case queerly pitted and worn completely through in 
 places, and last a plain little band of gold of the size 
 for a woman's finger a wedding ring. Constance, 
 gasping and with fingers shaking so from excitement
 
 21 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 that she could scarcely hold these objects, picked them 
 up and examined them the ring first. 
 
 It very evidently was, as she had immediately 
 thought, a wedding ring once fitted for a finger only a 
 trifle less slender than her own. One side of the gold 
 band was very much worn, not with the sort of wear 
 which a ring gets on a hand, but by some different sort 
 of abrasion. The other side of the band was rough- 
 ened and pitted but not so much worn; the inside still 
 bore the traces of an inscription. " As long as we 
 bo ... all live," Constance could read, and the 
 date June 2, 1891." 
 
 It was in January, 1896, Constance remembered, 
 that Alan Conrad had been brought to the people in 
 Kansas ; he then was " about three years old." If this 
 wedding ring was his mother's, the date would be about 
 right; it was a date probably something more than a 
 year before Alan was born. Constance put down the 
 ring and picked up the watch. Wherever it had lain, 
 it had been less protected than the ring; the covers 
 of the case had been almost eroded away, and whatever 
 initialing or other marks there might have been upon 
 the outside were gone. But it was like Uncle Benny's 
 watch or like one of his watches. He had several, 
 she knew, presented to him at various times watches 
 almost always were the testimonials given to seamen 
 for acts of sacrifice and bravery. She remembered 
 finding some of those testimonials in a drawer at his 
 house once where she was rummaging, when she was a 
 child. One of them had been a watch just like this, 
 large and heavy. The spring which operated the cover 
 would not work, but Constance forced the cover open. 
 
 There, inside the cover as she had thought it would
 
 THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS 213 
 
 be, was engraved writing. Sand had seeped into the 
 case; the inscription was obliterated in part. 
 
 " For his courage and skill in seam . . . master of 
 . . . which he brought to the rescue of the passengers 
 and crew of the steamer Winnebago foundering . . . 
 Point, Lake Erie, November 26th, 1890, this watch is 
 donated by the Buffalo Merchants' Exchange." 
 
 Uncle Benny's name, evidently, had been engraved 
 upon the outside. Constance could not particularly 
 remember the rescue of the people of the Winnebago; 
 1890 was years before she was born, and Uncle Benny 
 did not tell her that sort of thing about himself. 
 
 The watch, she saw now, must have lain in water, 
 for the hands under the crystal were rusted away and 
 the face was all streaked and cracked. She opened 
 the back of the watch and exposed the works ; they 
 too were rusted and filled with sand. Constance left 
 the watch open and, shivering a little, she gently laid 
 it down upon her bed. The pocket knife had no dis- 
 tinguishing mark of any sort; it was just a man's or- 
 dinary knife with the steel turned to rust and with 
 sand in it too. The coins were abraded and pitted 
 discs a silver dollar, a half dollar and three quar- 
 ters, not so much abraded, three nickels, and two pen- 
 nies. 
 
 Constance choked, and her eyes filled with tears. 
 These things plainly they were the things found in 
 Uncle Benny's pockets corroborated only too fully 
 what Wassaquam believed and what her father had 
 been coming to believe . that Uncle Benny was dead. 
 The muffler and the scrap of paper had not been in 
 water or in sand. The paper was written in pencil ; it 
 had not even been moistened or it would have blurred.
 
 214 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 There was nothing upon it to tell how long ago it had 
 been written ; but it had been written certainly before 
 June twelfth. " After June 12th," it said. 
 
 That day was August the eighteenth. 
 
 It was seven months since Uncle Benny had gone 
 away. After his strange interview with her that day 
 and his going home, had Uncle Benny gone out di- 
 rectly to his death? There was nothing to show that 
 he had not; the watch and coins must have lain for 
 many weeks, for months, in water and in sand to be- 
 come eroded in this way. But, aside from this, there 
 was nothing that could be inferred regarding the time 
 or place of Uncle Benny's death. That the package 
 had been mailed from Manitowoc meant nothing defi- 
 nite. Some one Constance could not Know whom 
 had had the muffler and the scrawled leaf of direc- 
 tions; later, after lying in water and in sand, the 
 things which were to be " sent " had come to that some 
 one's hand. Most probably this some one had been 
 one who was going about on ships ; when his ship had 
 touched at Manitowoc, he had executed his charge. 
 
 Constance left the articles upon the bed and threw 
 the window more widely open. She trembled and felt 
 stirred and faint, as she leaned against the window, 
 breathing deeply the warm air, full of life and with the 
 scent of the evergreen trees about the house. 
 
 The " cottage " of some twenty rooms stood among 
 the pines and hemlocks interspersed with hardwood on 
 " the Point," where were the great fine summer homes 
 of the wealthier " resorters." White, narrow roads, 
 just wide enough for two automobiles to pass abreast, 
 wound like a labyrinth among the tree trunks ; and the 
 sound of the wind among the pine needles was mingled
 
 THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS 215 
 
 with the soft lapping of water. To south and east 
 from her stretched Little Traverse one of the most 
 beautiful bits of water of the lakes ; across from her, 
 beyond the wrinkling water of the bay, the larger 
 town Petoskey with its hilly streets pitching 
 down steeply to the water's edge and the docks, and 
 with its great resort hotels, was plainly visible. To 
 westward, from the white life-saving station and the 
 lighthouse, the point ran out in shingle, bone white, 
 outcropping above the water; then for miles away the 
 shallow water was treacherous green and white to 
 where at the north, around the bend of the shore, 
 it deepened and grew blue again, and a single white 
 tower Ile-aux-Galets Light kept watch above it. 
 This was Uncle Benny's country. Here, twenty-five 
 years before, he had first met Henry, whose birthplace 
 a farm, deserted now was only a few miles back 
 among the hills. Here, before that, Uncle Benny had 
 been a young man, active, vigorous, ambitious. He 
 had loved this country for itself and for its traditions, 
 its Indian legends and fantastic stories. Half her own 
 love for it and, since her childhood, it had been to 
 her a region of delight was due to him and to the 
 things he had told her about it. Distinct and definite 
 memories of that companionship came to her. This 
 little bay, which had become now for the most part 
 only a summer playground for such as she, had been 
 once a place where he and other men had struggled 
 to grow rich swiftly ; he had outlined for her the ruined 
 lumber docks and pointed out to her the locations of 
 the dismantled sawmills. It was he who had told her 
 the names of the freighters passing far out, and the 
 names of the lighthouses, and something about each.
 
 216 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 He had told her too about the Indians. She remem- 
 bered one starry night when he had pointed out to her 
 in the sky the Indian "Way of Ghosts," the Milky 
 Way, along which, by ancient Indian belief, the souls 
 of Indians traveled up to heaven ; and how, later, lying 
 on the recessed seat beside the fireplace where she could 
 touch the dogs upon the hearth, he had pointed out to 
 her through the window the Indian " Way of Dogs " 
 among the constellations, by which the dogs too could 
 make that journey. It was he who had told her about 
 Michabou and the animals; and he had been the first 
 to tell her of the Drum. 
 
 The disgrace, unhappiness, the threat of something 
 worse, which must have made death a relief to Uncle 
 Benny, she had seen passed on now to Alan. What 
 more had come to Alan since she had last heard of him? 
 Some terrible substance to his fancies which would 
 assail him again as she had seen him assailed after 
 Luke had come? Might another attack have been 
 made upon him similar to that which he had met in 
 Chicago ? 
 
 Word had reached her father through shipping 
 circles in May and again in July which told of inquiries 
 regarding Uncle Benny which made her and her father 
 believe that Alan was searching for his father upon 
 the lakes. Now these articles which had arrived made 
 plain to her that he would never find Uncle Benny ; he 
 would learn, through others or through themselves, 
 that Uncle Benny was dead. Would he believe then 
 that there was no longer any chance of learning what 
 his father had done? Would he remain away because 
 of that, not letting her see or hear from him again? 
 
 She went back and picked up the wedding ring.
 
 THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS 217 
 
 The thought which had come to her that this was 
 Alan's mother's wedding ring, had fastened itself upon 
 her with a sense of certainty. It defended that un- 
 known mother ; it freed her, at least, from the stigma 
 which Constance's own mother had been so ready to 
 cast. Constance could not yet begin to place Uncle 
 Benny in relation to that ring; but she was beginning 
 to be able to think of Alan and his mother. She held 
 the little band of gold very tenderly in her hand; she 
 was glad that, as the accusation against his mother 
 had come through her people, she could tell him soon 
 of this. She could not send the ring to him, not 
 knowing where he was; that was too much risk. 
 But she could ask him to come to her ; this gave that 
 right. 
 
 She sat thoughtful for several minutes, the ring 
 clasped warmly in her hand ; then she went to her desk 
 and wrote: 
 
 Mr. John Welton, 
 
 Blue Rapids, Kansas. 
 Dear Mr. Welton : 
 
 It is possible that Alan Conrad has mentioned me 
 or at least told you of my father in connection with 
 his stay in Chicago. After Alan left Chicago, my 
 father wrote, twice to his Blue Rapids address, but 
 evidently he had instructed the postmaster there to 
 forward his mail and had not made any change in those 
 instructions, for the letters were returned to Alan's ad- 
 dress and in that way came back to us. We did not 
 like to press inquiries further than that, as of course 
 he could have communicated with us if he had not felt 
 that there was some reason for not doing so. Now, 
 however, something of such supreme importance to him
 
 218 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 has come to us that it is necessary for us to get word 
 to him at once. If you can tell me any address at 
 which he can be reached by telegraph or mail or 
 where a messenger can find him it will oblige us very 
 much and will be to his interest. 
 
 She hesitated, about to sign it ; then, impulsively, she 
 added : 
 
 I trust you know that we have Alan's interest at 
 heart and that you can safely tell us anything you may 
 know as to where he is or what he may be doing. We 
 all liked him here so very much. . . . 
 
 She signed her name. There were still two other 
 letters to write. Only the handwriting of the address 
 upon the package, the Manitowoc postmark and the 
 shoe box furnished clue to the sender of the ring and 
 the watch and the other things. Constance herself 
 could not trace those clues, but Henry or her father 
 could. She wrote to both of them, therefore, describ- 
 ing the articles which had come and relating what she 
 had done. Then she rang for a servant and sent the 
 letters to the post. They were in time to catch the 
 " dummy " train around the bay and, at Petoskey, 
 would get into the afternoon mail. The two for Chi- 
 cago would be delivered early the next morning, so she 
 could expect replies from Henry and her father on 
 the second day ; the letter to Kansas, of course, would 
 take much longer than that. 
 
 But the next noon she received a wire from Henry 
 that he was " coming up." It did not surprise her, as 
 she had expected him the end of the week. 
 
 Late that evening, she sat with her mother on the 
 wide, screened veranda. The breeze among the pines
 
 THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS 219 
 
 had died away ; the lake was calm. A half moon hung 
 midway in the sky, making plain the hills about the 
 bay and casting a broadening way of silver on the mir- 
 ror surface of the water. The lights of some boat 
 turning in between the points and moving swiftly 
 caught her attention. As it entered the path of the 
 moonlight, its look was so like that of Henry's power 
 yacht that she arose. She had not expected him until 
 morning; but now the boat was so near that she could 
 no longer doubt that it was his. He must have started 
 within an hour of the receipt of her letter and had 
 been forcing his engines to their fastest all the way 
 up. 
 
 He had done that partly, perhaps, for the sheer 
 sport of speed; but partly also for the sake of being 
 sooner with her. It was his way, as soon as he had 
 decided to leave business again and go to her, to arrive 
 as soon as possible; that had been his way recently, 
 particularly. So the sight of the yacht stirred her 
 warmly and she watched while it ran in close, stopped 
 and instantly dropped a dingey from the davits. She 
 saw Henry in the stern of the little boat; it disap- 
 peared in the shadow of a pier . . . she heard, pres- 
 ently, the gravel of the walk crunch under his quick 
 steps, and then she saw him in the moonlight among 
 the trees. The impetuousness, almost the violence of 
 his hurry to reach her, sent its thrill through her. 
 She went down on the path to meet him. 
 
 " How quickly you came ! " 
 
 " You let yourself think you needed me, Connie ! " 
 
 I did. . . " 
 
 He had caught her hand in his and he held it while 
 he brought her to the porch and exchanged greetings
 
 220 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 with her mother. Then he led her on past and into 
 the house. 
 
 When she saw his face, in the light, there were signs 
 of strain in it; she could feel strain now in his fingers 
 which held hers strongly but tensely too. 
 
 "You're tired, Henry!" 
 
 He shook his head. " It's been rotten hot in Chi- 
 cago; then I guess I was mentally stoking all the way 
 up here, Connie. When I got started, I wanted to see 
 you to-night . . . but first, where are the things you 
 wanted me to see? " 
 
 She ran up-stairs and brought them down to him. 
 Her hands were shaking now as she gave them to him ; 
 she could not exactly understand why; but her tremor 
 increased as she saw his big hands fumbling as he un- 
 wrapped the muffler and shook out the things it en- 
 closed. He took them up one by one and looked at 
 them, as she had done. His fingers were steady now 
 but only by mastering of control, the effort for which 
 amazed her. 
 
 He had the watch in his hands. 
 
 " The inscription is inside the front," she said. 
 
 She pried the cover open again and read, with him, 
 the words engraved within. 
 
 " ' As master of . . .' What ship was he master of 
 then, Henry, and how did he rescue the Winnebago's 
 people? " 
 
 " He never talked to me about things like that, Con- 
 nie. This is all? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And nothing since to show who sent them ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman will send some one
 
 THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS 221 
 
 to Manitowoc to make inquiries." Henry put the 
 things back in the box. "But of course, this is the 
 end of Benjamin Corvet." 
 
 " Of course," Constance said. She was shaking 
 again and, without willing it, she withdrew a little from 
 Henry. He caught her hand again and drew her back 
 toward him. His hand was quite steady. 
 
 " You know why I came to you as quick as I could? 
 You know why I why my mind was behind every 
 thrust of the engines ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " You don't ? Oh, you know ; you must know now ! " 
 
 " Yes, Henry," she said. 
 
 " I've been patient, Connie. Till I got your letter 
 telling me this about Ben, I'd waited for your sake 
 for our sakes though it seemed at times it was impos- 
 sible. You haven't known quite what's been the matter 
 between us these last months, little girl ; but I've known. 
 We've been engaged; but that's about all there's been 
 to it. Don't think I make little of that; you know 
 what I mean. You've been mine; but but you 
 haven't let me realize it, you see. And I've been 
 patient, for I knew the reason. It was Ben poisoning 
 your mind against me." 
 
 "No! No, Henry!" 
 
 " You've denied it ; I've recognized that you've denied 
 it, not only to me and to your people but to yourself. 
 I, of course, knew, as I know that I am here with your 
 hand in mine, and as we will stand before the altar 
 together, that he had no cause to speak against me. 
 I've waited, Connie, to give him a chance to say to you 
 what he had to say; I wanted you to hear it before 
 making you wholly mine. But now there's no need to
 
 222 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 wait any longer, you and I. Ben's gone, never to come 
 back. I was sure of that by what you wrote me, so 
 this time when I started to you I brought with me 
 this." 
 
 He felt in his pocket and brought out a ring of plain 
 gold ; he held it before her so that she could see within 
 it her own initials and his and a blank left for the 
 date. Her gaze went from it for an instant to the box 
 where he had put back the other ring Alan's moth- 
 er's. Feeling for her long ago gazing thus, as she must 
 have, at that ring, held her for a moment. Was it 
 because of that that Constance found herself cold 
 now? 
 
 " You mean you want me to marry you at once, 
 Henry?" 
 
 He drew her to him powerfully ; she felt him warm, 
 almost rough with passions. Since that day when, in 
 Alan Conrad's presence, he had grasped and kissed 
 her, she had not let him " realize " their engagement, 
 as he had put it. 
 
 "Why not?" he turned her face up to his now. 
 " Your mother's here ; your father will follow soon ; or, 
 if you will, we'll run away Constance ! You've kept 
 me off so long! You don't believe there's anything 
 against me, dear? Do you? Do you? 
 
 " No ; no ! Of course not ! " 
 
 " Then we're going to be married. . . . We're going 
 to be married, aren't we? Aren't we, Constance?" 
 
 " Yes ; yes, of course." 
 
 " Right away, we'll have it then ; up here ; now ! " 
 
 " No ; not now, Henry. Not up here ! " 
 
 "Not here? Why not?" 
 
 She could give no answer. He held her and com-
 
 THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS 223 
 
 manded her again; only when he frightened her, he 
 ceased. 
 
 "Why must it be at once, Henry? I don't under- 
 stand ! " 
 
 " It's not must, dear," he denied. " It's just that I 
 want you so ! " 
 
 When would it be, he demanded then ; before spring, 
 she promised at last. But that was all he could make 
 her say. And so he let her go. 
 
 The next evening, in the moonlight, she drove him 
 to Petoskey. He had messages to send and preferred 
 to trust the telegraph office in the larger town. Re- 
 turning they swung out along the country roads. The 
 night was cool here on the hills, under the stars; the 
 fan-shaped glare from their headlights, blurring the 
 radiance of the moon, sent dancing before them swiftly- 
 changing, distorted shadows of the dusty bushes beside 
 the road. Topping a rise, they came suddenly upon 
 his birthplace. She had not designed coming to that 
 place, but she had taken a turn at his direction, and 
 now he asked her to stop the car. He got out and 
 paced about, calling to her and pointing out the desir- 
 ableness of the spot as the site for their country home. 
 She sat in the motor, watching him and calling back to 
 him. 
 
 The house was small, log built, the chinks between 
 the logs stopped with clay. Across the road from it, 
 the silver bark of the birch trees gleamed white among 
 the black-barked timber. Smells of rank vegetation 
 came to her from these woods and from the weed-grown 
 fields about and beyond the house. There had been a 
 small garden beside the house once; now neglected 
 strawberry vines ran riot among the weed stems, and a
 
 224 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 clump of sunflowers stood with hanging, full-blown 
 heads under the August moon. 
 
 She gazed proudly at Henry's strong, well propor- 
 tioned figure moving about in the moonlight, and she 
 was glad to think that a boy from this house had 
 become the man that he was. But when she tried to 
 think of him as a child here, her mind somehow showed 
 her Alan playing about the sunflowers ; and the place 
 was not here ; it was the brown, Kansas prairie of which 
 he had told her. 
 
 " Sunflower houses," she murmured to herself. 
 " Sunflower houses. They used to cut the stalks and 
 build shacks with them." 
 
 " What's that ? " Henry said ; he had come back near 
 her. 
 
 The warm blood rushed to her face. " Nothing," 
 she said, a little ashamed. She opened the door beside 
 her. " Come ; we'll go back home now." 
 
 Coming from that poor little place, and having made 
 of himself what he had, Henry was such a man as she 
 would be ever proud to have for a husband ; there was 
 no man whom she had known who had proved himself 
 as much a man as he. Yet now, as she returned to the 
 point, she was thinking of this lake country not only 
 as Henry's land but as Alan Conrad's too. In some 
 such place he also had been born born by the mother 
 whose ring waited him in the box in her room. 
 
 Alan, upon the morning of the second of these days, 
 was driving northward along the long, sandy penin- 
 sula which separates the blue waters of Grand 
 Traverse from Lake Michigan; and, thinking of her, 
 he knew that she was near. He not only had remem- 
 bered that she would be north at Harbor Point this
 
 THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS 225 
 
 month ; he had seen in one of the Petoskey papers that 
 she and her mother were at the Sherrill summer home. 
 His business now was taking him nearer them than he 
 had been at any time before; and, if he wished to 
 weaken, he might convince himself that he might learn 
 from her circumstances which would aid him in his task. 
 But he was not going to her for help ; that was follow- 
 ing in his father's footsteps. When he knew every- 
 thing, then not till then he could go to her; for 
 then he would know exactly what was upon him and 
 what he should do. 
 
 His visits to the people named on those sheets writ- 
 ten by his father had been confusing at first; he had 
 had great difficulty in tracing some of them at all ; and, 
 afterwards, he could uncover no certain connection 
 either between them and Benjamin Corvet or between 
 themselves. But recently, he had been succeeding bet- 
 ter in this latter. 
 
 He had seen he reckoned them over again four- 
 teen of the twenty-one named originally on Benjamin 
 Corvet's lists ; that is, he had seen either the individual 
 originally named, or the surviving relative written in 
 below the name crossed off. He had found that the 
 crossing out of the name meant that the person was 
 dead, except in the case of two who had left the country 
 and whose whereabouts were as unknown to their pres- 
 ent relatives as they had been to Benjamin Corvet, and 
 the case of one other, who was in an insane asylum. 
 
 He had found that no one of the persons whom he 
 saw had known Benjamin Corvet personally; many of 
 them did not know him at all, the others knew him only 
 as a name. But, when Alan proceeded, always there 
 was one connotation with each of the original names;
 
 226 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 always one circumstance bound all together. When he 
 had established that circumstance as influencing the 
 fortunes of the first two on his lists, he had said to him- 
 self, as the blood pricked queerly under the skin, that 
 the fact might be a mere coincidence. When he estab- 
 lished it also as affecting the fate of the third and of 
 the fourth and of the fifth, such explanation no longer 
 sufficed ; and he found it in common to all fourteen, 
 sometimes as the deciding factor of their fate, sometimes 
 as only slightly affecting them, but always it was there. 
 
 In how many different ways, in what strange, diverse 
 manifestations that single circumstance had spread to 
 thole people whom Alan had interviewed! No two of 
 them had been affected alike, he reckoned, as he went 
 over his notes of them. Now he was going to trace 
 those consequences to another. To what sort of place 
 would it bring him to-day and what would he find there? 
 He knew only that it would be quite distinct from the 
 rest. 
 
 The driver beside whom he sat on the front seat of 
 the little automobile was an Indian ; an Indian woman 
 and two round-faced silent children occupied the seat 
 behind. He had met these people in the early morn- 
 ing on the road, bound, he discovered, to the annual 
 camp meeting of the Methodist Indians at Northport. 
 They were going his way, and they knew the man of 
 whom he was in search ; so he had hired a ride of them. 
 The region through which they were traveling now was 
 of farms, but interspersed with desolate, waste fields 
 where blackened stumps and rotting windfalls remained 
 after the work of the lumberers. The hills and many 
 of the hollows were wooded; there were even places 
 where lumbering was still going on. To his left across
 
 THINGS FROM CORVET'S POCKETS 227 
 
 the water, the twin Manitous broke the horizon, high and 
 round and blue with haze. To his right, from the 
 higher hilltops, he caught glimpses of Grand Traverse 
 and of the shores to the north, rising higher, dimmer, 
 and more blue, where they broke for Little Traverse 
 and where Constance Sherrill was, two hours away 
 across the water; but he had shut his mind to that 
 thought. 
 
 The driver turned now into a rougher road, bearing 
 more to the east. 
 
 They passed people more frequently now groups 
 in farm wagons, or groups or single individuals, walking 
 beside the road. All were going in the same direction 
 as themselves, and nearly all were Indians, drab dressed 
 figures attired obviously in their best clothes. Some 
 walked barefoot, carrying new shoes in their hands, 
 evidently to preserve them from the dust. They sa- 
 luted gravely Alan's driver, who returned their salutes 
 "B'jou!" "B'jou!" 
 
 Traveling eastward, they had lost sight of Lake 
 Michigan ; and suddenly the wrinkled blueness of Grand 
 Traverse appeared quite close to them. The driver 
 turned aside from the road across a cleared field where 
 ruts showed the passing of many previous vehicles ; 
 crossing this, they entered the woods. Little fires for 
 cooking burned all about them, and nearer were parked 
 an immense number of farm wagons and buggies, with 
 horses unharnessed and munching grain. Alan's guide 
 found a place among these for his automobile, and they 
 got out and went forward on foot. All about them, 
 seated upon the moss or walking about, were Indians, 
 family groups among which children played. A plat- 
 form had been built under the trees ; on it some thirty
 
 228 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Indians, all men, sat in straight-backed chairs ; in front 
 of and to the sides of the platform, an audience of sev- 
 eral hundred occupied benches, and around the borders 
 of the meeting others were gathered, merely observing. 
 A very old Indian, with inordinately wrinkled skin and 
 dressed in a frock coat, was addressing these people 
 from the platform in the Indian tongue. 
 
 Alan halted beside his guide. He saw among the 
 drab-clad figures looking on, the brighter dresses and 
 sport coats of summer visitors who had come to watch. 
 The figure of a girl among these caught his attention, 
 and he started ; then swiftly he told himself that it was 
 only his thinking of Constance Sherrill that made him 
 believe this was she. But now she had seen him; she 
 paled, then as quickly flushed, and leaving the group 
 she had been with, came toward him. 
 
 He had no choice now whether he would avoid her 
 or not ; and his happiness at seeing her held him stupid, 
 watching her. Her eyes were very bright and with 
 something more than friendly greeting; there was hap- 
 piness in them too. His throat shut together as he 
 recognized this, and his hand closed warmly over the 
 small, trembling hand which she put out to him. All 
 his conscious thought was lost for the moment in the 
 mere realization of her presence; he stood, holding her 
 hand, oblivious that there were people looking; she 
 too seemed careless of that. Then she whitened again 
 and withdrew her hand; she seemed slightly confused. 
 He was confused as well; it was not like this that he 
 had meant to greet her; he caught himself together. 
 
 Cap in hand, he stood beside her, trying to look and 
 to feel as any ordinary acquaintance of hers would 
 have looked.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 
 
 they got word to you!" Constance ex- 
 claimed; she seemed still confused. "Oh, 
 no of course they couldn't have done that! 
 They've hardly got my letter yet." 
 
 " Your letter? " Alan asked. 
 
 " I wrote to Blue Rapids," she explained. " Some 
 things came they were sent to me. Some things of 
 Uncle Benny's which were meant for you instead of 
 me." 
 
 " You mean you've heard from him ? " 
 
 " No not that." 
 
 " What things, Miss Sherrill? " 
 
 " A watch of his and some coins and a ring." 
 She did not explain the significance of those things, and 
 he could not tell from her mere enumeration of them 
 and without seeing them that they furnished proof that 
 his father was dead. She could not inform him of that, 
 she felt, just here and now. 
 
 "I'll tell you about that later. You you were 
 coming to Harbor Point to see us ? " 
 
 He colored. " I'm afraid not. I got as near as this 
 to you because there is a man an Indian I have 
 to see." 
 
 "An Indian? What is his name? You see, I know 
 quite a lot of them."
 
 230 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " Jo Papo." 
 
 She shook her head. " No ; I don't know him." 
 
 She had drawn him a little away from the crowd 
 about the meeting. His blood was beating hard with 
 recognition of her manner toward him. Whatever he 
 was, whatever the disgrace might be that his father had 
 left to him, she was still resolute to share in it. He 
 had known she would be so. She found a spot where 
 the moss was covered with dry pine needles and sat 
 down upon the ground. 
 
 " Sit down," she invited ; " I want you to tell me 
 what you have been doing." 
 
 " I've been on the boats." He dropped down upon 
 the moss beside her. " It's a wonderful business, 
 Miss Sherrill; I'll never be able to go away from the 
 water again. I've been working rather hard at my 
 new profession studying it, I mean. Until yester- 
 day I was a not very highly honored member of the 
 crew of the package freighter Oscoda; I left her at 
 Frankfort and came up here." 
 
 "Is Wassaquam with you?" 
 
 " He wasn't on the Oscoda; but he was with me at 
 first. Now, I believe, he has gone back to his own 
 people to Middle Village." 
 
 " You mean you've been looking for Mr. Corvet in 
 that way?" 
 
 " Not exactly that." He hesitated ; but he could see 
 no reason for not telling what he had been doing. He 
 had not so much hidden from her and her father what 
 he had found in Benjamin Corvet's house; rather, he 
 had refrained from mentioning it in his notes to them 
 when he left Chicago because he had thought that the 
 lists would lead to an immediate explanation ; they had
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 231 
 
 not led to that, but only to a suggestion, indefinite as 
 jet. He had known that, if his search finally developed 
 nothing more than it had, he must at last consult 
 Sherrill and get Sherrill's aid. 
 
 " We found some writing, Miss Sherrill," he said, 
 " in the house on Astor Street that night after Luke 
 came." 
 
 " What writing? " 
 
 He took the lists from his pocket and showed them 
 to her. She separated and looked through the sheets 
 and read the names written in the same hand that had 
 written the directions upon the slip of paper that came 
 to her four days before, with the things from Uncle 
 Benny's pockets. 
 
 " My father had kept these very secretly," he ex- 
 plained. " He had them hidden. Wassaquam knew 
 where they were, and that night after Luke was dead 
 and you had gone home, he gave them to me.'* 
 
 "After I had gone home? Henry went back to see 
 you that night; he had said he was going back, and 
 afterwards I asked him, and he told me he had seen you 
 again. Did you show him these? " 
 
 " He saw them yes." 
 
 " He was there when Wassaquam showed you where 
 they were? " 
 
 yes." 
 
 A little line deepened between her brows, and she sat 
 thoughtful. 
 
 " So you have been going about seeing these people," 
 she said. " What have you found out ? " 
 
 " Nothing definite at all. None of them knew my 
 father ; they were only amazed to find that any one in 
 Chicago had known their names."
 
 232 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 She got up suddenly. " You don't mind if I am with 
 you when you talk with this Indian ? " 
 
 He arose and looked around for the guide who had 
 brought him. His guide had been standing near, evi- 
 dently waiting until Alan's attention was turned his 
 way; he gestured now toward a man, a woman, and 
 several children who were lunching, seated about a 
 basket on the ground. The man thin, patient and 
 of medium size was of the indefinite age of the Indian, 
 neither young nor yet old. It was evident that life 
 had been hard for the man ; he looked worn and under- 
 nourished; his clothing was the cast-off suit of some 
 one much larger which had been inexpertly altered to 
 make it fit him. As Alan and Constance approached 
 them, the group turned on them their dark, inexpres- 
 sive eyes, and the woman got up, but the man remained 
 seated on the ground. 
 
 " I'm looking for Jo Papo," Alan explained. 
 
 " What you want ? " the squaw asked. " You got 
 work ? " The words were pronounced with difficulty 
 and evidently composed most of her English vocab- 
 ulary. 
 
 " I want to see him, that's all." Alan turned to the 
 man. "You're Jo Papo, aren't you?" 
 
 The Indian assented by an almost imperceptible 
 nod. 
 
 "You used to live near Escanaba, didn't you?" 
 
 Jo Papo considered before replying; either his scru- 
 tiny of Alan reassured him, or he recalled nothing hav- 
 ing to do with his residence near Escanaba which dis- 
 turbed him. " Yes ; once," he said. 
 
 " Your father was Azen Papo? " 
 
 "He's dead," the Indian replied. "Not my
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 233 
 
 father, anyway. Grandfather. What about him? " 
 
 " That's what I want to ask you," Alan said. 
 " When did he die and how? " 
 
 Jo iPapo got up and stood leaning his back against 
 a tree. So far from being one who was merely curious 
 about Indians, this stranger perhaps was coming 
 about an Indian claim to give money maybe for in- 
 justices done in the past. 
 
 " My grandfather die fifteen years ago," he informed 
 them. " From cough, I think." 
 
 "Where was that?" Alan asked. 
 
 " Escanaba near there." 
 
 "What did he do?" 
 
 " Take people to shoot deer fish a guide. I 
 think he plant a little too." 
 
 "He didn't work on the boats?" 
 
 " No ; my father, he work on the boats." 
 
 "What was his name?" 
 
 " Like me ; Jo Papo too. He's dead." 
 
 " What is your Indian name ? " 
 
 "Flying Eagle." 
 
 "What boats did your father work on?" 
 
 " Many boats." 
 
 "What did he do?" 
 
 "Deck hand." 
 
 " What boat did he work on last? " 
 
 "Last? How do I know? He went away one year 
 and didn't come back? I suppose he was drowned from 
 a boat." 
 
 "What year was that?" 
 
 " I was little then ; I do not know." 
 
 " How old were you ? " 
 
 " Maybe eight years ; maybe nine or ten."
 
 234 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " How old are you now ? " 
 
 " Thirty, maybe." 
 
 " Did you ever hear of Ben j amin Corvet ? " 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "Benjamin Corvet." 
 
 " No." 
 
 Alan turned to Constance; she had been listening 
 intently, but she made no comment. " That is all, 
 then," he said to Papo ; " if I find out anything to your 
 advantage, I'll let you know." He had aroused, he 
 understood, expectations of benefit in these poor In- 
 dians. Something rose in Alan's throat and choked 
 him. Those of whom Benjamin Corvet had so labori- 
 ously kept trace were, very many of them, of the sort 
 of these Indians; that they had never heard of Benja- 
 min Corvet was not more significant than that they 
 were people of whose existence Benjamin Corvet could 
 not have been expected to be aware. What conceiv- 
 able bond could there have been between Alan's father 
 and such poor people as these? Had his father 
 wronged these people? Had he owed them something? 
 This thought, which had been growing stronger with 
 each succeeding step of Alan's investigations, chilled 
 and horrified him now. Revolt against his father more 
 active than ever before seized him, revolt stirring 
 stronger with each recollection of his interviews with 
 the people upon his list. As they walked away, Con- 
 stance appreciated that he was feeling something 
 deeply ; she too was stirred. 
 
 " They all all I have talked to are like that," 
 he said to her. " They all have lost some one upon the 
 lakes." 
 
 In her feeling for him, she had laid her hand upon
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 235 
 
 his arm ; now her fingers tightened to sudden tense- 
 ness. " What do you mean? " she asked. 
 
 "Oh, it is not definite yet not clear!" She felt 
 the bitterness in his tone. "They have not any of 
 them been able to make it wholly clear to me. It is 
 like a record that has been blurred. These original 
 names must have been written down by my father many 
 years ago many, most of those people, I think are 
 dead ; some are nearly forgotten. The only thing that 
 is fully plain is that in every case my inquiries have led 
 me to those who have lost one, and sometimes more than 
 one relative upon the lakes." 
 
 Constance thrilled to a vague horror ; it was not 
 anything to which she could give definite reason. His 
 tone quite as much as what he said was its cause. His 
 experience plainly had been forcing him to bitterness 
 against his father ; and he did not know with certainty 
 yet that his father was dead. 
 
 She had not found it possible to tell him that yet; 
 now consciously she deferred telling him until she could 
 take him to her home and show him what had come. 
 The shrill whistling of the power yacht in which she 
 and her party had come recalled to her that all were to 
 return to the yacht for luncheon, and that they must 
 be waiting for her. 
 
 " You'll lunch with us, of course," she said to Alan, 
 " and then go back with us to Harbor Point. It's a 
 day's journey around the two bays; but we've a boat 
 here." 
 
 He assented, and they went down to the water where 
 the white and brown power yacht, with long, graceful 
 lines, lay somnolently in the sunlight. A little boat 
 took them out over the shimmering, smooth surface to
 
 236 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 the ship ; swells from a faraway freighter swept under 
 the beautiful, burnished craft, causing it to roll lazily 
 as they boarded it. A party of nearly a dozen men 
 and girls, with an older woman chaperoning them, 
 lounged under the shade of an awning over the after 
 deck. They greeted her gaily and looked curiously at 
 Alan as she introduced him. 
 
 As he returned their rather formal acknowledg- 
 ments and afterward fell into general conversation 
 with them, she became for the first time fully aware of 
 how greatly he had changed from what he had been 
 when he had come to them six months before in Chicago. 
 These gay, wealthy loungers would have dismayed him 
 then, and he would have been equally dismayed by the 
 luxury of the carefully appointed yacht; now he was 
 not thinking at all about what these people might 
 think of him. In return, they granted him considera- 
 tion. It was not, she saw that they accepted him as 
 one of their own sort, or as some ordinary acquaintance 
 of hers; if they accounted for him to themselves at all, 
 they must believe him to be some officer employed upon 
 her father's ships. He looked like that with his face 
 darkened and reddened by the summer sun and in his 
 clothing like that of a ship's officer ashore. He had 
 not weakened under the disgrace which Benjamin Cor- 
 vet had left to him, whatever that might be; he had 
 grown stronger facing it. A lump rose in her throat 
 as she realized that the lakes had been setting their 
 seal upon him, as upon the man whose strength and 
 resourcefulness she loved. 
 
 " Have you worked on any of our boats ? " she asked 
 him, after luncheon had been finished, and the anchor 
 of the ship had been raised.
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 237 
 
 A queer expression came upon his face. ** I've 
 thought it best not to do that, Miss Sherrill," he re- 
 plied. 
 
 She did not know why the next moment she should 
 think of Henry. 
 
 " Henry was going to bring us over in his yacht 
 the Chippewa," she said. "But he was called away 
 suddenly yesterday on business to St. Ignace and used 
 his boat to go over there." 
 
 " He's at Harbor Point, then." 
 
 " He got there a couple of nights ago and will be 
 back again to-night or to-morrow morning." 
 
 The yacht was pushing swiftly, smoothly, with hardly 
 a hum from its motors, north along the shore. He 
 watched intently the rolling, wooded hills and the 
 ragged little bays and inlets. His work and his investi- 
 gatings had not brought him into the neighborhood 
 before, but she found that she did not have to name the 
 places to him; he knew them from the charts. 
 
 " Grand Traverse Light," he said to her as a white 
 tower showed upon their left. Then, leaving the shore, 
 they pushed out across the wide mouth of the larger 
 bay toward Little Traverse. He grew more silent as 
 they approached it. 
 
 " It is up there, isn't it," he asked, pointing, " that 
 they hear the Drum?" 
 
 " Yes ; how did you know the place ? " 
 
 *' I don't know it exactly ; I want you to show me." 
 
 She pointed out to him the copse, dark, primeval, 
 blue in its contrast with the lighter green of the trees 
 about it and the glistening white of the shingle and 
 of the more distant sand bluffs. He leaned forward, 
 staring at it, until the changed course of the yacht, as
 
 238 $6 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 it swung about toward the entrance to the bay, ob- 
 scured it. They were meeting other power boats now 
 of their yacht's own size and many smaller ; they passed 
 white-sailed sloops and cat-boats, almost becalmed, with 
 girls and boys diving from their sides and swimming 
 about. As they neared the Point, a panorama of play 
 such as, she knew, he scarcely could have seen before, 
 was spread in front of them. The sun gleamed back 
 from the white sides and varnished decks and shining 
 brasswork of a score or more of cruising yachts and 
 many smaller vessels lying in the anchorage. 
 
 " The Chicago to Mackinac yacht race starts this 
 week, and the cruiser fleet is working north to be in at 
 the finish," she offered. Then she saw he was not look- 
 ing at these things ; he was studying with a strange ex- 
 pression the dark, uneven hills which shut in the two 
 towns and the bay. 
 
 " You remember how the ship rhymes you told me 
 and that about Michabou and seeing the ships made me 
 feel that I belonged here on the lakes," he reminded 
 her. " I have felt something not recognition ex- 
 actly, but something that was like the beginning of 
 recognition many times this summer when I saw 
 certain places. It's like one of those dreams, you 
 know, in which you are conscious of having had the 
 same dream before. I feel that I ought to know this 
 place." 
 
 They landed only a few hundred yards from the cot- 
 tage. After bidding good-by to her friends, they went 
 up to it together through the trees. There was a small 
 sun room, rather shut off from the rest of the house, 
 to which she led him. Leaving him there, she ran up- 
 stairs to get the things.
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 239 
 
 She halted an instant beside the door, with the box in 
 her hands, before she went back to him, thinking how 
 to prepare him against the significance of these relics 
 of his father. She need not prepare him against the 
 mere fact of his father's death; he had been beginning 
 to believe that already; but these things must have far 
 more meaning for him than merely that. They must 
 frustrate one course of inquiry for him at the same 
 time they opened another; they would close for him 
 forever the possibility of ever learning anything about 
 himself from his father ; they would introduce into his 
 problem some new, some unknown person the sender 
 of these things. 
 
 She went in and put the box down upon the card 
 table. 
 
 " The muffler in the box was your father's," she told 
 him. " He had it on the day he disappeared. The 
 other things," her voice choked a little, " are the things 
 he must have had in his pockets. They've been lying 
 in water and sand " 
 
 He gazed at her. " I understand," he said after an 
 instant. " You mean that they prove his death." 
 
 She assented gently, without speaking. As he ap- 
 proached the box, she drew back from it and slipped 
 away into the next room. She walked up and down 
 there, pressing her hands together. He must be look- 
 ing at the things now, unrolling the muffler. . . . What 
 would he be feeling as he saw them ? Would he be glad, 
 with that same gladness which had mingled with her 
 own sorrow over Uncle Benny, that his father was gone 
 gone from his guilt and his fear and his disgrace ? 
 Or would he resent that death which thus left every- 
 thing unexplained to him? He would be looking at the
 
 240 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 ring. That, at least, must bring more joy than grief 
 to him. He would recognize that it must be his 
 mother's wedding ring; if it told him that his mother 
 must be dead, it would tell him that she had been mar- 
 ried, or had believed that she was married! 
 
 Suddenly she heard him calling her. " Miss Sher- 
 rill ! " His voice had a sharp thrill of excitement. 
 
 She hurried toward the sun room. She could see 
 him through the doorway, bending over the card table 
 with the things spread out upon its top in front of 
 him. 
 
 " Miss Sherrill ! " he called again. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He straightened ; he was very pale. " Would coins 
 that my father had in his pocket all have been more 
 than twenty years old ? " 
 
 She ran and bent beside him over the coins. 
 " Twenty years ! " she repeated. She was making out 
 the dates of the coins now herself; the markings were 
 eroded, nearly gone in some instances, but in every case 
 enough remained to make plain the date. " Eighteen- 
 ninety 1893 1889," she made them out. Her 
 voice hushed queerly. " What does it mean ? " she 
 whispered. 
 
 He turned over and reexamined the articles with 
 hands suddenly steadying. " There are two sets of 
 things here," he concluded. " The muffler and paper of 
 directions they belonged to my father. The other 
 tilings it isn't six months or less than six months 
 that they've lain in sand and water to become worn like 
 this; it's twenty years. My father can't have had 
 these things ; they were somewhere else, or some one else 
 had them. He wrote his directions to that person
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 241 
 
 after June twelfth, he said, so it was before June 
 twelfth he wrote it; but we can't tell how long before. 
 It might have been in February, when he disappeared ; 
 it might have been any time after that. But if the di- 
 rections were written so long ago, why weren't the 
 things sent to you before this ? Didn't the person have 
 the things then? Did we have to wait to get them? 
 Or was it the instructions to send them that he didn't 
 have ? Or, if he had the instructions, was he waiting to 
 receive word when they were to be sent? " 
 
 " To receive word ? " she echoed. 
 
 " Word from my father ! You thought these things 
 proved my father was dead. I think they prove he is 
 alive ! Oh, we must think this out ! " 
 
 He paced up and down the room; she sank into a 
 chair, watching him. " The first thing that we must 
 do," he said suddenly, " is to find out about the watch. 
 What is the 'phone number of the telegraph office? * 
 
 She told him, and he went out to the telephone; she 
 sprang up to follow him, but checked herself and merely 
 waited until he came back. 
 
 " I've wired to Buffalo," he announced. " The Mer- 
 chants' Exchange, if it is still in existence, must have 
 a record of the presentation of the watch. At any 
 rate, the wreck of the Winnebago and the name of the 
 skipper of the other boat must be in the files of the 
 newspapers of that time." 
 
 " Then you'll stay here with us until an answer 
 comes." 
 
 " If we get a reply by to-morrow morning ; I'll wait 
 till then. If not, I'll ask you to forward it to me. I 
 must see about the trains and get back to Frankfort. 
 I can cross by boat from there to Manitowoc that
 
 242 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 will be quickest. We must begin there, by trying to 
 find out who sent the package." 
 
 " Henry Spearman's already sent to have that inves- 
 tigated." 
 
 Alan made no reply ; but she saw his lips draw tighter 
 quickly. " I must go myself as soon as I can," he said, 
 after a moment. 
 
 She helped him put the muffler and the other articles 
 back into the box; she noticed that the wedding ring 
 was no longer with them. He had taken that, then ; it 
 had meant to him all that she had known it must 
 mean. . . . 
 
 In the morning she was up very early ; but Alan, the 
 servants told her, had risen before she had and had 
 gone out. The morning, after the cool northern night, 
 was chill. She slipped a sweater on and went out on 
 the veranda, loking about for him. An iridescent 
 haze shrouded the hills and the bay; in it she heard a 
 ship's bell strike twice ; then another struck twice 
 then another and another and another. The 
 haze thinned as the sun grew warmer, showing the 
 placid water of the bay on which the ships stood double 
 a real ship and a mirrored one. She saw Alan re- 
 turning, and knowing from the direction from which he 
 came that he must have been to the telegraph office, 
 she ran to meet him. 
 
 " Was there an answer ? " she inquired eagerly. 
 
 He took a yellow telegraph sheet from his pocket and 
 held it for her to read. 
 
 " Watch presented Captain Caleb Stafford, master 
 of propeller freighter Marvin Halch for rescue of crew 
 and passengers of sinking steamer Wwmebago off Long 
 Point, Lake Erie."
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 243 
 
 She was breathing quickly in her excitement. 
 "Caleb Stafford!" she exclaimed. "Why, that was 
 Captain Stafford of Stafford and Ramsdell! They 
 owned the Miwaka! " 
 
 " Yes," Alan said. 
 
 " You asked me about that ship the Miwaka 
 that first morning at breakfast ! " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 A great change had come over him since last night ; 
 he was under emotion so strong that he seemed scarcely 
 to dare to speak lest it master him a leaping, exult- 
 ant impulse it was, which he fought to keep down. 
 
 " What is it, Alan? " she asked. " What is it about 
 the Miwaka? You said you'd found some reference to 
 it in Uncle Benny's house. What was it? What did 
 you find there? " 
 
 " The man " Alan swallowed and steadied himself 
 and repeated " the man I met in the house that night 
 mentioned it." 
 
 " The man who thought you were a ghost ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " How how did he mention it? " 
 
 " He seemed to think I was a ghost that had haunted 
 Mr. Corvet the ghost from the Miwaka; at least he 
 shouted out to me that I couldn't save the Miwaka! " 
 
 " Save the Miwaka! What do you mean, Alan? 
 The Miwaka was lost with all her people officers and 
 crew no one knows how or where ! " 
 
 " All except the one for whom the Drum didn't 
 beat ! " 
 
 "What's that?" Blood pricked in her cheeks. 
 " What do you mean, Alan? " 
 
 " I don't know yet; but I think I'll soon find out! "
 
 44 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " No ; you can tell me more now, Alan. Surely you 
 can. I must know. I have the right to know. Yes- 
 terday, even before you found out about this, you knew 
 things you weren't telling me things about the 
 people you'd been seeing. They'd all lost people on 
 the lakes, you said ; but you found out more than that." 
 
 " They'd all lost people on the Mwoaka! " he said. 
 " All who could tell me where their people were lost ; a 
 few were like Jo Papo we saw yesterday, who knew only 
 the year his father was lost; but the time always was 
 the time that the M'vwdka disappeared ! " 
 
 " Disappeared ! " she repeated. Her veins were 
 pricking cold. What did he know, what could any one 
 know of the MiwaJca, the ship of which nothing ever 
 was heard except the beating of the Indian Drum? 
 She tried to make him say more; but he looked away 
 now down to the lake. 
 
 " The Chippewa must have come in early this morn- 
 ing," he said. " She's lying in the harbor ; I saw her 
 on my way to the telegraph office. If Mr. Spearman 
 has come back with her, tell him I'm sorry I can't wait 
 to see him." 
 
 " When are you going? " 
 
 " Now." 
 
 She offered to drive him to Petoskey, but he already 
 had arranged for a man to take him to the train. 
 
 She went to her room after he was gone and spread 
 out again on her bed the watch now the watch of 
 Captain Stafford of the M'vwdka with the knife and 
 coins of more than twenty years ago which came with it. 
 The meaning of them now was all changed; she felt 
 that ; but what the new meaning might be could not yet 
 come to her. Something of it had come to Alan ; that,
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 245 
 
 undoubtedly, was what had so greatly stirred him ; but 
 she could not yet reassemble her ideas. Yet a few 
 facts had become plain. 
 
 A maid came to say that Mr. Spearman had come 
 up from his boat for breakfast with her and was down- 
 stairs. She went down to find Henry lounging in one 
 of the great wicker chairs in the living room. He 
 arose and came toward her quickly ; but she halted 
 before he could seize her. 
 
 " I got back, Connie " 
 
 "Yes; I heard you did." 
 
 " What's wrong, dear? " 
 
 " Alan Conrad has been here, Henry." 
 
 " He has? How was that? " 
 
 She told him while he watched her intently. " He 
 wired to Buffalo about the watch. He got a reply 
 which he brought to me half an hour ago." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "The watch belonged to Captain Stafford who was 
 lost with the Miwaka, Henry." 
 
 He made no reply ; but waited. 
 
 " You may not have known that it was his ; I mean, 
 you may not have known that it was he who rescued 
 the people of the Winnebago, but you must have known 
 that Uncle Benny didn't." 
 
 " Yes ; I knew that, Connie," he answered evenly. 
 
 " Then why did you let me think the watch was his 
 and that he must be dead? " 
 
 " That's all's the matter? You had thought he was 
 dead. I believed it was better for you for every one 
 to believe that." 
 
 She drew a little away from him, with hands clasped 
 behind her back, gazing intently at him. " There was
 
 246 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 some writing found in Uncle Benny's house in Astor 
 Street a list of names of relatives of people who 
 had lost their lives upon the lake. Wassaquam knew 
 where those things were. Alan says they were given 
 to him in your presence." 
 
 She saw the blood rise darkly under his skin. " That 
 is true, Connie." 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me about that? " 
 
 He straightened as if with anger. " Why should I ? 
 Because he thought that I should? What did he tell 
 you about those lists ? " 
 
 " I asked you, after you went back, if anything else 
 had happened, Henry, and you said, ' nothing.' I 
 should not have considered the finding of those lists 
 ' nothing.' " 
 
 "Why not? What were they but names? What 
 has he told you they were, Connie? What has he said 
 to you? " 
 
 "Nothing except that his father had kept them 
 very secretly; but he's found out they were names of 
 people who had relatives on the Miwaka! " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 Recalling how her blood had run when Alan had told 
 her that, Henry's whiteness and the following suf- 
 fusion of his face did not surprise her. 
 
 He turned away a moment and considered. 
 " Where's Conrad now, Connie? " 
 
 " He's gone to Frankfort to cross to Manitowoc." 
 
 " To get deeper into that mess, I suppose. He'll 
 only be sorry." 
 
 "Sorry?" 
 
 " I told that fellow long ago not to start stirring 
 these matters up about Ben Corvet, and particularly I
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 247 
 
 told him that he was not to bring any of it to you. 
 It's not a thing that a man like Ben covered up for 
 twenty years till it drove him crazy is sure not to be 
 a thing for a girl to know. Conrad seems to have paid 
 no attention to me. But I should think by this time 
 he ought to begin to suspect what sort of thing he's 
 going to turn up. I don't know; but I certainly sus- 
 pect Ben leaving everything to that boy, whom no 
 one had heard of, and the sort of thing which has come 
 up since. It's certainly not going to be anything 
 pleasant for any of us, Connie for you, or your 
 father, or for me, or for anybody who'd cared for Ben, 
 or had been associated with him. Least of all, I should 
 say, would it prove anything pleasant for Conrad. 
 Ben ran away from it, because he knew what it was ; 
 why doesn't this fellow let him stay away from it?" 
 
 " He I mean Alan, Henry," she said, " isn't think- 
 ing about himself in this; he isn't thinking about his 
 father. He believes he is certain now that, what- 
 ever his father did, he injured some one; and his idea 
 in going ahead he hasn't told it to me that way, but 
 I know is to find out the whole matter in order that 
 he may make recompense. It's a terrible thing, what- 
 ever happened. He knows that, and I know; but he 
 wants and I want him for his sake, even for Uncle 
 Benny's sake to see it through." 
 
 " Then it's a queer concern you've got for Ben ! 
 Let it alone, I tell you." 
 
 She stood flushed and perplexed, gazing at him. 
 She never had seen him under stronger emotion. 
 
 " You misunderstood me once, Connie ! " he appealed. 
 " You'll understand me now ! " 
 
 She had been thinking about that injustice she had
 
 248 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 done him in her thought about his chivalry to his 
 partner and former benefactor, when Uncle Benny was 
 still keeping his place among men. Was Henry now 
 moved, in a way which she could not understand, by 
 some other obligation to the man who long ago had 
 aided him? Had Henry hazarded more than he had 
 told her of the nature of the thing hidden which, if she 
 could guess it, would justify what he said? 
 
 In the confusion of her thought, one thing came 
 clearly which troubled her and of which she could not 
 speak. The watch of Captain Stafford's and the ring 
 and the coins, which had made her believe that Uncle 
 Benny was dead, had not been proof of that to Henry. 
 Yet he had taken advantage of her belief, without un- 
 deceiving her, to urge her to marry him at once. 
 
 She knew of the ruthlessness of Henry's business 
 life; he had forced down, overcome all who opposed 
 him, and he had made full use for his own advantage of 
 other men's mistakes and erroneous beliefs and opin- 
 ions. If he had used her belief in Uncle Benny's death 
 to hasten their marriage, it was something which 
 others particularly she could pardon and accept. 
 
 If she was drawn to him for his strength and domi- 
 nance, which sometimes ran into ruthlessness, she had 
 no right to complain if he turned it thus upon her. 
 
 She had made Alan promise to write her, if he 
 was not to return, regarding what he learned; and a 
 letter came to her on the fourth day from him in 
 Manitowoc. The postoffice employees had no recol- 
 lection, he said, of the person who had mailed the pack- 
 age; it simply had been dropped by some one into the 
 receptacle for mailing packages of that sort. They 
 did not know the handwriting upon the wrapper, which
 
 THE OWN3K ^F THE WATCH 249 
 
 he had taken with him ; nor was it known at the bank or 
 in any of the stores where he had shown it. The shoe 
 dealer had no recollection of that particular box. 
 Alan, however, was continuing his inquiries. 
 
 In September he reported in a brief, totally imper- 
 sonal note, that he was continuing with the investiga- 
 tions he had been making previous to his visit to 
 Harbor Point; this came from Sarnia, Ontario. In 
 October he sent a different address where he could be 
 found in case anything more came, such as the box 
 which had come to Constance in August. 
 
 She wrote to him in reply each time; in lack of 
 anything more important to tell him, she related some 
 of her activities and inquired about his. After she 
 had written him thus twice, he replied, describing his 
 life on the boats pleasantly and humorously; then, 
 though she immediately replied, she did not hear from 
 him again. 
 
 She had returned to Chicago late in September and 
 soon was very busy with social affairs, benefits, and 
 bazaars which were given that fall for the Red Cross 
 and the different Allied causes ; a little later came a 
 series of the more personal and absorbing luncheons 
 and dances and dinners for her and for Henry, since 
 their engagement, which long had been taken for 
 granted by every one who knew them, was announced 
 now. So the days drifted into December and winter 
 again. 
 
 The lake, beating against the esplanade across the 
 Drive before Constance's windows, had changed its 
 color; it had no longer its autumn blue and silver; it 
 was gray, sluggish with floating needle-points of ice 
 held in solution. The floe had not yet begun to form,
 
 250 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 but the piers and breakwaters had white ice caps 
 frozen from spray harbingers of the closing of navi- 
 gation. The summer boats, those of Corvet, Sherrill, 
 and Spearman with the rest, were being tied up. The 
 birds were gone ; only the gulls remained gray, 
 clamorous shapes circling and calling to one another 
 across the water. Early in December the newspapers 
 announced the closing of the locks at the " Soo " by 
 the ice. 
 
 That she had not heard from Alan was beginning to 
 recur to Constance with strange insistence. He must 
 have left the boats by now, unless he had found work 
 on one of those few which ran through the winter. 
 
 He and his occupation, instead of slipping from her 
 thoughts with time, absorbed her more and more. 
 Soon after he had gone to Manitowoc and he had 
 written that he had discovered nothing, she had gone 
 to the office of the Petoskey paper and, looking back 
 over the twenty-year-old files, she had read the ac- 
 count of the loss of the MiwaJca, with all on board. 
 That fate was modified only by the Indian Drum beat- 
 ing short. So one man from the Miwaka had been 
 saved somehow, many believed. If that could have 
 been, there was, or there had been, some one alive after 
 the ship " disappeared " Alan's word went through 
 her with a chill who knew what had happened to the 
 ship and who knew of the fate of his shipmates. 
 
 She had gone over the names again; if there was 
 meaning in the Drum, who was the man who had been 
 saved and visited that fate on Benjamin Corvet? 
 Was it Luke? There was no Luke named among the 
 crew; but such men often went by many names. If 
 Luke had been among the crew of the Miwaka and had
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 251 
 
 brought from that lost ship something which threat- 
 ened Uncle Benny that, at least, explained Luke. 
 
 Then another idea had seized her. Captain Caleb 
 Stafford was named among the lost, of course; with 
 him had perished his son, a boy of three. That was 
 all that was said, and all that was to be learned of him, 
 the boy. 
 
 Alan had been three then. This was wild, crazy 
 speculation. The ship was lost with all hands; only 
 the Drum, believed in by the superstitious and the most 
 ignorant, denied that. The Drum said that one soul 
 had been saved. How could a child of three have been 
 saved when strong men, to the last one, had perished? 
 And, if he had been saved, he was Stafford's son. 
 Why should Uncle Benny have sent him away and 
 cared for him and then sent for him and, himself dis- 
 appearing, leave all he had to Stafford's son ? 
 
 Or was he Stafford's son? Her thought went back 
 to the things which had been sent the things from a 
 man's pockets with a wedding ring among them. She 
 had believed that the ring cleared the mother's name; 
 might it in reality only more involve it? Why had it 
 come back like this to the man by whom, perhaps, it 
 had been given? Henry's words came again and again 
 to Constance : " It's a queer concern you've got for 
 Ben. Leave it alone, I tell you ! " He knew then 
 something about Uncle Benny which might have 
 brought on some terrible thing which Henry did not 
 know but might guess? Constance went weak within. 
 Uncle Benny's wife had \left him, she remembered. 
 Was it better, after all, to "leave it alone? " 
 
 But it wasn't a thing which one could command one's 
 mind to leave alone ; and Constance could not make her-
 
 252 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 self try to, so long as it concerned Alan. Coming 
 home late one afternoon toward the middle of Decem- 
 ber, she dismissed the motor and stood gazing at the 
 gulls. The day was chill, gray; the air had the feel, 
 and the voices of the gulls had the sound to her, which 
 precede the coming of a severe storm. The gulls re- 
 called sharply to her the day when Alan first had come 
 to them, and how she had been the one first to meet him 
 and the child verse which had told him that he too was 
 of the lakes. 
 
 She went on into the house. A telegraph envelope 
 addressed to her father was on the table in the hall. 
 A servant told her the message had come an hour be- 
 fore, and that he had telephoned to Mr. Sherrill's office, 
 but Mr. Sherrill was not in. There was no reason for 
 her thinking that the message might be from Alan ex- 
 cept his presence in her thoughts, but she went at once 
 to the telephone and called her father. He was in 
 now, and he directed her to open the message and read 
 it to him. 
 
 " Have some one," she read aloud ; she choked in her 
 excitement at what came next " Have some one who 
 knew Mr. Corvet well enough to recognize him, even if 
 greatly changed, meet Carferry Number 25 Manito- 
 woc Wednesday this week. Alan Conrad." 
 
 Her heart was beating fast. " Are you there? " she 
 said into the 'phone. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Whom shall you send? " 
 
 There was an instant's silence. "I shall go my- 
 self," her father answered. 
 
 She hung up the receiver. Had Alan found Uncle 
 Benny? He had found, apparently, someone whose re-
 
 THE OWNER OF THE WATCH 253 
 
 semblance to the picture she had showed him was 
 marked enough to make him believe that person might 
 be Benjamin Corvet; or he had heard of some one who, 
 from the account he had received, he thought might be. 
 She read again the words of the telegram ..." even 
 if greatly changed ! " and she felt startling and terrify- 
 ing warning in that phrase.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 OLD BUEB OF THE FERRY 
 
 IT was in late November and while the coal 
 carrier Pontiac, on which he was serving as 
 lookout, was in Lake Superior that Alan first 
 heard of Jim Burr. The name spoken among some 
 other names in casual conversation by a member of the 
 crew, stirred and excited him ; the name James Burr, oc- 
 curring on Benjamin Corvet's list, had borne opposite 
 it the legend " All disappeared ; no trace," and Alan, 
 whose investigations had accounted for all others whom 
 the list contained, had been able regarding Burr only to 
 verify the fact that at the address given no one of this 
 name was to be found. 
 
 He questioned the oiler who had mentioned Burr. 
 The man had met Burr one night in Manitowoc with 
 other men, and something about the old man had im- 
 pressed both his name and image on him; he knew no 
 more than that. At Manitowoc! the place from 
 which Captain Stafford's watch had been sent to Con- 
 stance Sherrill and where Alan had sought for, but had 
 failed to find, the sender! Had Alan stumbled by 
 chance upon the one whom Benjamin Corvet had been 
 unable to trace? Had Corvet, after his disappear- 
 ance, found Burr? Had Burr been the sender, under 
 Corvet's direction, of those things? Alan speculated 
 upon this. The man might well, of course, be some
 
 OLD BURR OF THE FERRY 255 
 
 other Jim Burr ; there were probably many men by that 
 name. Yet the James Burr of Corvet's list must have 
 been such a one as the oiler described a white haired 
 old man. 
 
 Alan could not leave the Pontiac and go at once to 
 Manitowoc to seek for Burr ; for he was needed where 
 he was. The season of navigation on Lake Superior 
 was near its close. In Duluth skippers were clamoring 
 for cargoes; ships were lading in haste for a last trip 
 before ice closed the lake's outlet at the Soo against all 
 ships. It was fully a week later and after the Pontiac 
 had been laden again and had repassed the length of 
 Lake Superior that Alan left the vessel at Sault Ste. 
 Marie and took the train for Manitowoc. 
 
 The little lake port of Manitowoc, which l?e reached 
 in the late afternoon, was turbulent with the lake 
 season's approaching close. Long lines of bulk 
 freighters, loaded and tied up to wait for spring, filled 
 the river; their released crews rioted through the town. 
 Alan inquired for the seamen's drinking place, where 
 his informant had met Jim Burr; following the direc- 
 tions he received he made his way along the river bank 
 until he found it. The place was neat, immaculate; a 
 score of lakemen sat talking at little tables or leaned 
 against the bar. Alan inquired of the proprietor for 
 Jim Burr. 
 
 The proprietor knew old Jim Burr yes. Burr 
 was a wheelsman on Carferry Number 25. He was a 
 lakeman, experienced and capable ; that fact, some 
 months before, had served as introduction for him to 
 the frequenters of this place. When the ferry was in 
 harbor and his duties left him idle, Burr came up and 
 waited there, occupying always the same chair. He
 
 256 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 never drank ; he never spoke to others unless they spoke 
 first to him, but then he talked freely about old days 
 on the lakes, about ships which had been lost and about 
 men long dead. 
 
 Alan decided that there could be no better place to 
 interview old Burr than here ; he waited therefore, and 
 in the early evening the old man came in. 
 
 Alan watched him curiously as, without speaking to 
 any one, he went to the chair recognized as his and sat 
 down. He was a slender but muscularly built man 
 seeming about sixty-five, but he might be considerably 
 younger or older than that. His hair was completely 
 white; his nose was thin and sensitive; his face was 
 smoothly placid, emotionless, contented; his eyes were 
 queerly clouded, deepset and intent. 
 
 Those whose names Alan had found on Corvet's list 
 had been of all ages, young and old; but Burr might 
 well have been a contemporary of Corvet on the lakes. 
 Alan moved over and took a seat beside the old man. 
 
 " You're from No. 25 ? " he asked, to draw him into 
 conversation. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I've been working on the carrier Pontiac as look- 
 out. She's on her way to tie up at Cleveland, so I left 
 her and came on here. You don't know whether there's 
 a chance for me to get a place through the winter on 
 No. 25?" 
 
 Old Burr reflected. " One of our boys has been talk- 
 ing of leaving. I don't know when he expects to go. 
 You might ask." 
 
 "Thank you; I will. My name's Conrad Alan 
 Conrad." 
 
 He saw no recognition of the name in Burr's recep-
 
 OLD BURR OF THE FERRY 257 
 
 tion of it ; but he had not expected that. None of those 
 on Benjamin Corvet's list had had any knowledge of 
 Alan Conrad or had heard the name before. 
 
 Alan was silent, watching the old man; Burr, silent 
 too, seemed listening to the conversation which came to 
 them from the tables near by, where men were talking 
 of cargoes, and of ships and of men who worked and 
 sailed upon them. 
 
 " How long have you been on the lakes ? " Alan in- 
 quired. 
 
 " All my life." The question awakened reminiscence 
 in the old man. " My father had a farm. I didn't like 
 farming. The schooners they were almost all 
 schooners in those days came in to load with lumber. 
 When I was nine years old, I ran away and got on 
 board a schooner. I've been at it, sail or steam, ever 
 since." 
 
 " Do you remember the Miwaka? " 
 
 " The Miwaka? " 
 
 Old Burr turned abruptly and studied Alan with a 
 slow scrutiny which seemed to look him through and 
 through ; yet while his eyes remained fixed on Alan sud- 
 denly they grew blank. He was not thinking now of 
 Alan, but had turned his thoughts within himself. 
 
 " I remember her yes. She was lost in '95," he 
 said. " In '95," he repeated. 
 
 " You lost a nephew with her, didn't you? " 
 
 " A nephew no. That is a mistake. I lost a 
 brother." 
 
 " Where were you living then ? " 
 
 " In Emmet County, Michigan." 
 
 " When did you move to Point Corbay, Ontario ? " 
 
 " I never lived at Point Corbay."
 
 258 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " Did any of your family live there ? " 
 
 " No." Old Burr looked away from Alan, and the 
 queer cloudiness of his eyes became more evident. 
 
 "Why, do you ask all this?" he said irritably. 
 " What have they been telling you about me ? I told 
 you about myself ; our farm was in Emmet County, but 
 we had a liking for the lake. One of my brothers was 
 lost in '95 with the MiwaJca and another in '99 with the 
 Susan Hart." 
 
 "Did you know Benjamin Corvet?" Alan asked. 
 
 Old Burr stared at him uncertainly. " I know who 
 he is, of course." 
 
 " You never met him ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Did you receive a communication from him some 
 time this year? " 
 
 "From him? From Benjamin Corvet? No." Old 
 Burr's uneasiness seemed to increase. " What sort of 
 communication? " 
 
 " A request to send some things to Miss Constance 
 Sherrill at Harbor Point." 
 
 " I never heard of Miss Constance Sherrill. To send 
 what things?" 
 
 " Several things among them a watch which had 
 belonged to Captain Stafford of the Miwaka." 
 
 Old Burr got up suddenly and stood gazing down at 
 Alan. "A watch of Captain Stafford's ? no," he 
 said agitatedly. " No ! " 
 
 He moved away and left the place; and Alan sprang 
 up and followed him. 
 
 He was not, it seemed probable to Alan now, the 
 James Burr of Corvet's list ; at least Alan could not see 
 how he could be that one. Among the names of the
 
 OLD BURR OF THE FERRY 259 
 
 crew of the M'wodka Alan had found that of a Frank 
 Burr, and his inquiries had informed him that this man 
 was a nephew of the James Burr who had lived near 
 Port Corbay and had " disappeared " with all his 
 family. Old Burr had not lived at Port Corbay at 
 least, he claimed not to have lived there; he gave an- 
 other address and assigned to himself quite different 
 connections. For every member of the crew of the 
 Miwaha there had been a corresponding, but different 
 name upon Corvet's list the name of a close relative. 
 If old Burr was not related to the Burr on Corvet's list, 
 what connection could he have with the Miwaka, and 
 why should Alan's questions have agitated him so? 
 Alan would not lose sight of old Burr until he had 
 learned the reason for that. 
 
 He followed, as the old man crossed the bridge and 
 turned to his left among the buildings on the river 
 front. Burr's figure, vague in the dusk, crossed the 
 railroad yards and made its way to where a huge black 
 bulk, which Alan recognized as the ferry, loomed at 
 the waterside. He disappeared aboard it. Alan, fol- 
 lowing him, gazed about. 
 
 A long, broad, black boat the ferry was, almost four 
 hundred feet to the tall, bluff bow. Seen from the stem, 
 the ship seemed only an unusually rugged and power- 
 ful steam freighter; viewed from the beam, the vessel 
 appeared slightly short for its freeboard ; only when 
 observed from the stern did its distinguishing peculiar- 
 ity become plain ; for a few feet only above the water 
 line, the stern was all cut away, and the long, low 
 cavern of the deck gleamed with rails upon which the 
 electric lights glinted. Save for the supports of tjie 
 superstructure and where the funnels and ventilator
 
 260 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 pipes passed up from below, that whole strata of the 
 ship was a vast car shed; its tracks, running to the 
 edge of the stern, touched tracks on the dock. A 
 freight engine was backing loaded cars from a train 
 of sixteen cars upon the rails on the starboard side ; 
 another train of sixteen big box cars waited to go 
 aboard on the tracks to the port of the center stan- 
 chions. When the two trains were aboard, the great 
 vessel " No. 25," in big white stencil upon her black 
 sides were her distinguishing marks would thrust 
 out into the ice and gale for the Michigan shore nearly 
 eighty miles away. 
 
 Alan thrilled a little at his inspection of the ferry. 
 He had not seen close at hand before one of these great 
 craft which, throughout the winter, brave ice and storm 
 after all or nearly all other lake boats are tied 
 up. He had not meant to apply there when he ques- 
 tioned old Burr about a berth on the ferry ; he had used 
 that merely as a means of getting into conversation 
 with the old man. But now he meant to apply ; for it 
 would enable him to find out more about old Burr. 
 
 He went forward between the tracks upon the deck 
 to the companionway, and ascended and found the skip- 
 per and presented his credentials. No berth on the 
 ferry was vacant yet but one soon would be, and Alan 
 was accepted in lieu of the man who was about to leave ; 
 his wages would not begin until the other man left, but 
 in the meantime he could remain aboard the ferry if he 
 wished. Alan elected to remain aboard. The skipper 
 called a man to assign quarters to Alan, and Alan, go- 
 ing with the man, questioned him about Burr. 
 
 All that was known definitely about old Burr on the 
 ferry, it appeared, was that he had joined the vessel in
 
 OLD BURR OF THE FERRY 261 
 
 the early spring. Before that they did not know; 
 he might be an old lakeman who, after spending years 
 ashore, had returned to the lakes for a livelihood. He 
 had represented himself as experienced and trained upon 
 the lakes, and he had been able to demonstrate his fit- 
 ness ; in spite of his age he was one of the most capable 
 of the crew. 
 
 The next morning, Alan approached old Burr in the 
 crew's quarters and tried to draw him into conversation 
 again about himself; but Burr only stared at him with 
 his intent and oddly introspective eyes and would not 
 talk upon this subject. A week passed; Alan, estab- 
 lished as a lookout now on No. 25 and carrying on his 
 duties, saw Burr daily and almost every hour; his 
 watch coincided with Burr's watch at the wheel they 
 went on duty and were relieved together. Yet better 
 acquaintance did not make the old man more communi- 
 cative ; a score of times Alan attempted to get him to 
 tell more about himself, but he evaded Alan's questions 
 and, if Alan persisted, he avoided him. Then, on an 
 evening bitter cold with the coming of winter, clear and 
 filled with stars, Alan, just relieved from watch, stood 
 by the pilothouse as Burr also was relieved. The old 
 man paused beside him, looking to the west. 
 
 " Have you ever been in Sturgeon's Bay ? " he asked. 
 
 "In Wisconsin? No." 
 
 " There is a small house there and a child ; born," 
 he seemed figuring the date, " Feb. 12, 1914." 
 
 " A relative of yours ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " One of your brothers' children or grandchildren? " 
 
 " I had no brothers," old Burr said quietly. 
 
 Alan stared at him, amazed. " But you told me
 
 262 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 about your brothers and about their being lost in 
 wrecks on the lake; and about your home in Emmet 
 County ! " 
 
 " I never lived in Emmet County," old Burr replied. 
 " Some one else must have told you that about me. I 
 come from Canada of French-Canadian descent. 
 My family were of the Hudson Bay people. I was a 
 guide and hunter until recently. Only a few years ago 
 I came onto the lakes, but my cousin came here before 
 I did. It is his child." 
 
 Old Burr moved away and Alan turned to the mate. 
 
 "What do you make of old Burr? " he asked. 
 
 " He's a romancer. We get 'em that way once in a 
 while old liars ! He'll give you twenty different ac- 
 counts of himself twenty different lives. None of 
 them is true. I don't know who he is or where he 
 came from, but it's sure he isn't any of the things he 
 says he is." 
 
 Alan turned away, chill with disappointment. It was 
 only that, then old Burr was a romancer after the 
 manner of some old seamen. He constructed for his 
 own amusement these " lives." He was not only not 
 the Burr of Corvet's list ; he was some one not any way 
 connected with the Miwaka or with Corvet. Yet Alan, 
 upon reflection, could not believe that it was only this. 
 Burr, if he had wished to do that, might perhaps merely 
 have simulated agitation when Alan questioned him 
 about the Miwaka; but why should he have wished to 
 simulate it? Alan could conceive of no condition 
 which by any possibility could havp suggested such 
 simulation to the old man. 
 
 He ceased now, however, to question Burr since ques- 
 tioning either had no result at all or led the old man to
 
 OLD BURR OF THE FERRY 263 
 
 weaving fictions ; in response the old man became by 
 degrees more communicative. He told Alan, at differ- 
 ent times, a number of other " lives " which he claimed 
 as his own. In only a few of these lives had he been, 
 by his account, a seaman; he had been a multitude of 
 other things in some a farmer, in others a lumber- 
 jack or a fisherman; he had been born, he told, in a 
 half-dozen different places and came of as many differ- 
 ent sorts of people. 
 
 On deck, one night, listening while old Burr related 
 his sixth or seventh life, excitement suddenly seized 
 Alan. Burr, in this life which he was telling, claimed 
 to be an Englishman born in Liverpool. He had been, 
 he said, a seaman in the British navy ; he had been pres- 
 ent at the shelling of Alexandria ; later, because of some 
 difficulty which he glossed over, he had deserted and 
 had come to " the States " ; he had been first a deck- 
 hand then the mate of a tramp schooner on the lakes. 
 Alan, gazing at the old man, felt exultation leaping and 
 throbbing within him. He recognized this " life " ; he 
 knew in advance its incidents. This life which old Burr 
 was rehearsing to him as his own, was the actual life of 
 Munro Burkhalter, one of the men on Corvet's list re- 
 garding whom Alan had been able to obtain full in- 
 formation ! 
 
 Alan sped below, when he was relieved from watch, 
 and got out the clippings left by Corvet and the notes 
 of what he himself had learned in his visits to the homes 
 of these people. His excitement grew greater as he 
 pored over them ; he found that he could account, with 
 their aid, for all that old Burr had told him. Old 
 Burr's " lives " were not, of course, his ; yet neither 
 were they fictions. They their incidents, at least
 
 264 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 were actualities. They were woven from the lives of 
 those upon Corvet's list! Alan felt his skin prickling 
 and the blood beating fast in his temples. How could 
 Burr have known these incidents? Who could he be 
 to know them all? To what man, but one, could all 
 of them be known? Was old Burr . . . Benjamin 
 Corvet? 
 
 Alan could give no certain answer to that question. 
 He could not find any definite resemblance in Burr's 
 placid face to the picture of Corvet which Constance 
 had shown him. Yet, as regarded his age and his phys- 
 ical characteristics, there was nothing to make his iden- 
 tity with Benjamin Corvet impossible. Sherrill or 
 others who had known Benjamin Corvet well, might be 
 able to find resemblances which Alan could not. And, 
 whether Burr was or was not Corvet, he was undeniably 
 some one to whom the particulars of Corvet's life were 
 known. 
 
 Alan telegraphed that day to Sherrill ; but when the 
 message had gone doubt seized him. He awaited 
 eagerly the coming of whoever Sherrill might send and 
 the revelations regarding Corvet which might come 
 then; but at the same time he shrunk from that reve- 
 lation. He himself had become, he knew, wholly of the 
 lakes now ; his life, whatever his future might be, would 
 be concerned with them. Yet he was not of them in 
 the way he would have wished to be; he was no more 
 than a common seaman. 
 
 Benjamin Corvet, when he went away, had tried to 
 leave his place and power among lakemen to Alan; 
 Alan, refusing to accept what Corvet had left until 
 Corvet's reason should be known, had felt obliged also 
 to refuse friendship with the Sherrills. When revela-
 
 OLD BURR OF THE FERRY 265 
 
 tion came, would it make possible Alan's acceptance of 
 the place Corvet had prepared for him, or would it 
 leave him where he was ? Would it bring him nearer to 
 Constance Sherrill, or would it set him forever away 
 from her?
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 A GHOST SHIP 
 
 4 1 /^ OLDER some to-night, Conrad." 
 
 1^ "Yes, sir." 
 
 ^"^ " Strait's freezing over, they say." 
 
 " Pretty stiff ice outside here already, sir." 
 
 The skipper glanced out and smiled confidently but 
 without further comment; yet he took occasion to go 
 down and pass along the car deck and observe the men 
 who under direction of the mate were locking the lugs 
 under the car wheels, as the trains came on board. 
 The wind, which had risen with nightfall to a gale off 
 the water, whipped snow with it which swirled and back- 
 eddied with the switching cars into the great, gaping 
 stern of the ferry. 
 
 Officially, and to chief extent in actuality, naviga- 
 tion now had " closed " for the winter. Further 
 up the harbor, beyond Number 25, glowed the white 
 lanterns marking two vessels moored and " laid up " 
 till spring; another was still in the active process 
 of " laying up." Marine insurance, as regards all 
 ordinary craft, had ceased; and the Government 
 at sunrise, five days before, had taken the warning lights 
 from the Straits of Mackinaw, from Ile-aux-Galets, 
 from north Manitou, and the Fox Islands; and the 
 light at Beaver Island had but five nights more to burn. 
 
 Alan followed as the captain went below, and he went
 
 A GHOST SHIP 267 
 
 aft between the car tracks, watching old Burr. Having 
 no particular duty when the boat was in dock, old Burr 
 had gone toward the steamer " laying up," and now 
 was standing watching with absorption the work going 
 on. There was a tug a little farther along, with steam 
 up and black smoke pouring from its short funnel. 
 Old Burr observed this boat too and moved up a little 
 nearer. Alan, following the wheelsman, came opposite 
 the stern of the freighter ; the snow let through enough 
 of the light from the dock to show the name Stough- 
 ton. It was, Alan knew, a Corvet, Sherrill, and Spear- 
 man ship. He moved closer to old Burr and watched 
 him more intently. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he asked, as the old man 
 halted and, looking down at the tug, shook his head. 
 
 " They're crossing," the wheelsman said aloud, but 
 more to himself than to Alan. " They're laying her 
 up here," he jerked his head toward the Stoughton. 
 " Then they're crossing to Manitowoc on the tug." 
 
 " What's the matter with that? " Alan cried. 
 
 Burr drew up his shoulders and ducked his head 
 down as a gust blew. It was cold, very cold indeed in 
 that wind, but the old man had on a mackinaw and, 
 out on the lake, Alan had seen him on deck coatless in 
 weather almost as cold as this. 
 
 "It's a winter storm," Alan cried. "It's like it 
 that way; but to-day's the 15th, not the 5th of De- 
 cember ! " 
 
 " That's right," Burr agreed. " That's right." 
 
 The reply was absent, as though Alan had stumbled 
 upon what he was thinking, and Burr had no thought 
 yet to wonder at it. 
 
 " And it's the Stoughton they're laying up, not
 
 268 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 the " he stopped and stared at Burr to let him sup- 
 ply the word and, when the old man did not, he re- 
 peated again "not the " 
 
 " No," Burr agreed again, as though the name had 
 been given. " No." 
 
 " It was the Martha Corvet you laid up, wasn't it? " 
 Alan cried quickly. " Tell -me that time on the 5th 
 it was the Martha Corvet? " 
 
 Burr jerked away; Alan caught him again and, with 
 physical strength, detained him. "Wasn't it that?" 
 he demanded. "Answer me; it was the Martha Cor- 
 vet? " 
 
 The wheelsman struggled ; he seemed suddenly terri- 
 fied with the terror which, instead of weakening, sup- 
 plied infuriated strength. He threw Alan off for an 
 instant and started to flee back toward the ferry; and 
 now Alan let him go, only following a few steps to 
 make sure that the wheelsman returned to Number 
 25. 
 
 Watching old Burr until he was aboard the ferry, 
 Alan spun about and went back to the Stoughton. 
 
 Work of laying up the big steamer had been finished, 
 and in the snow-filled dusk her crew were coming 
 ashore. Alan, boarding, went to the captain's cabin, 
 where he found the Stoughton's master making ready 
 to leave the ship. The captain, a man of forty-five 
 or fifty, reminded Alan vaguely of one of the ship- 
 masters who had been in Spearman's office when Alan 
 first went there in the spring. If he had been there, 
 he showed no recollection of Alan now, but good- 
 humoredly looked up for the stranger to state his 
 business. 
 
 " I'm from Number 25," Alan introduced himself.
 
 A GHOST SHIP 269 
 
 " This is a Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman ship. Do 
 you know Mr. Corvet when you see him, sir? " 
 
 "Know Ben Corvet?" the captain repeated. The 
 manner of the young man from the car ferry told him 
 it was not an idle question. " Yes ; I know Ben Corvet. 
 I ain't seen him much in late years." 
 
 " Will you come with me for a few minutes then, 
 Captain? " Alan asked. As the skipper stared at him 
 and hesitated, Alan made explanation, " Mr. Corvet 
 lias been missing for months. His friends have said 
 he's been away somewhere for his health ; but the truth 
 is, he's been missing. There's a man I want you 
 to look at, Captain if you used to know Mr. Cor- 
 vet." 
 
 "I've heard of that." The captain moved alertly 
 now. "Where is he?" 
 
 Alan led the master to the Ferry. Old Burr had 
 left the car deck ; they found him on his way to the 
 wheelhouse. 
 
 The S 'fought on' s skipper stared. "That the 
 man? " he demanded. 
 
 " Yes, sir. Remember to allow for his clothes and 
 his not being shaved and that something has hap- 
 pened." 
 
 The St ought on' s skipper followed to the wheelhouse 
 and spoke to Burr. Alan's blood beat fast as he 
 watched this conversation. Once or twice more the 
 skipper seemed surprised; but it was plain that his 
 first interest in Burr quickly had vanished; when he 
 left the wheelhouse, he returned to Alan indulgently. 
 "You thought that was Mr. Corvet?" he asked, 
 amused. 
 
 "You don't think so?" Alan asked.
 
 270 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " Ben Corvet like that ? Did you ever see Ben Cor- 
 vet?" 
 
 " Only his picture," Alan confessed. " But you 
 looked queer when you first saw Burr." 
 
 " That was a trick of his eyes. Say, they did give 
 me a start. Ben Corvet had just that sort of trick 
 of looking through a man." 
 
 " And his eyes were like that? " 
 
 " Sure. But Ben Corvet couldn't be like that ! " 
 
 Alan prepared to go on duty. He would not let 
 himself be disappointed by the skipper's failure to 
 identify old Burr; the skipper had known immediately 
 at sight of the old man that he was the one whom Alan 
 thought was Corvet, and he had found a definite re- 
 semblance. It might well have been only the impossibil- 
 ity of believing that Corvet could have become like 
 this which had prevented fuller recognition. Mr. 
 Sherrill, undoubtedly, would send some one more famil- 
 iar with Benjamin Corvet and who might make proper 
 allowances. 
 
 Alan went forward to his post as a blast from the 
 steam whistle of the switching engine, announcing that 
 the cars all were on board, was answered by a warning 
 blast from the ferry. On the car decks the trains 
 had been secured in place; and, because of the rough- 
 ness of the weather, the wheels had been locked upon 
 the tracks with additional chains as well as with the 
 blocks and chains usually used. Orders now sounded 
 from the bridge ; the steel deck began to shake with the 
 reverberations of the engines ; the mooring lines were 
 taken in; the rails upon the fantail of the ferry sepa- 
 rated from the rails upon the wharf, and clear water 
 showed between. Alan took up his slow pace as look-
 
 A GHOST SHIP 271 
 
 out from rail to rail across the bow, straining his 
 eyes forward into the thickness of the snow-filled 
 night. 
 
 Because of the severe cold, the watches had been 
 shortened. Alan would be relieved from time to time 
 to warm himself, and then he would return to duty 
 again. Old Burr at the wheel would be relieved and 
 would go on duty at the same hours as Alan himself. 
 Benjamin Corvet! The fancy reiterated itself to him. 
 Could he be mistaken? Was that man, whose eyes 
 turned alternately from the compass to the bow of the 
 ferry as it shifted and rose and fell, the same who had 
 sat in that lonely chair turned toward the fireplace in 
 the house on Astor Street? Were those hands, which 
 held the steamer to her course, the hands which had 
 written to Alan in secret from the little room off his 
 bedroom and which pasted so carefully the newspaper 
 clippings concealed in the library? 
 
 Regularly at the end of every minute, a blast from 
 the steam whistle reverberated; for a while, signals 
 from the shore answered; for a few minutes the shore 
 lights glowed through the snow. Then the lights were 
 gone, and the eddies of the gale ceased to bring echoes 
 of the obscuration signals. Steadily, at short, sixty- 
 second intervals, the blast of Number 25's warning 
 burst from the whistle; then that too stopped. The 
 great ferry was on the lake alone ; in her course, Num- 
 ber 25 was cutting across the lanes of all ordinary 
 lake travel; but now, with ordinary navigation closed, 
 the position of every other ship upon the lake was 
 known to the officers, and formal signals were not 
 thought necessary. Flat floes, driven by wind and 
 wave, had windrowed in their course; as Number 25,
 
 272 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 which was capable of maintaining two thirds its open 
 water speed when running through solid " green " ice 
 two feet thick, met this obstruction, its undercut bow 
 rose slightly; the ice, crushed down and to the sides, 
 hurled, pounding and scraping, under the keel and 
 along the black, steel sides of the ship; Alan could hear 
 the hull resounding to the buffeting as it hurled the 
 floes away, and more came, or the wind threw them 
 back. The water was washing high higher than 
 Alan had experienced seas before. The wind, smash- 
 ing almost straight across the lake from the west, 
 with only a gust or two from the north, was throwing 
 up the water in great rushing ridges on which the bow 
 of Number 25 rose jerkily up and up, suddenly to 
 fall, as the support passed on, so that the next wave 
 washed nearly to the rail. 
 
 Alan faced the wind with mackinaw buttoned about 
 his throat; to make certain his hearing, his ears were 
 unprotected. They numbed frequently, and he drew 
 a hand out of the glove to rub them. The windows to 
 protect the wheelsman had been dropped, as the snow 
 had gathered on the glass; and at intervals, as he 
 glanced back, he could see old Burr's face as he 
 switched on a dim light to look at the compass. The 
 strange placidity which usually characterized the old 
 man's face had not returned to it since Alan had spoken 
 with him on the dock; its look was intent and queerly 
 drawn. Was old Burr beginning to remember re- 
 member that he was Benjamin Corvet? Alan did not 
 believe it could be that ; again and again he had spoken 
 Corvet's name to him without effect. Yet there must 
 have been times when, if he was actually Corvet, he had 
 remembered who he was. He must have remembered
 
 A GHOST SHIP 273 
 
 that when he had written directions to some one to 
 send those things to Constance Sherrill; or, a strange 
 thought had come to Alan, had he written those in- 
 structions to himself? Had there been a moment when 
 he had been so much himself that he had realized that 
 he might not be himself again and so had written the 
 order which later, mechanically, he had obeyed? This 
 certainly would account for the package having been 
 mailed at Manitowoc and for Alan's failure to find 
 out by whom it had been mailed. It would account too 
 for the unknown handwriting upon the wrapper, if 
 some one on the ferry had addressed the package for 
 the old man. He must inquire whether any one among 
 the crew had done that. 
 
 What could have brought back that moment of recol- 
 lection to Corvet, Alan wondered; the finding of the 
 things which he had sent? What might bring another 
 such moment? Would his seeing the Sherrills again 
 or Spearman act to restore him? 
 
 For half an hour Alan paced steadily at the bow. 
 The storm was increasing noticeably in fierceness; the 
 wind-driven snowflakes had changed to hard pellets 
 which, like little bullets, cut and stung the face ; and it 
 was growing colder. From a cabin window came the 
 blue flash of the wireless, which had been silent after 
 notifying the shore stations of their departure. It had 
 commenced again; this was unusual. Something still 
 more unusual followed at once; the direction of the 
 gale seemed slowly to shift, and with it the wash of the 
 water; instead of the wind and the waves coming from 
 dead ahead now, they moved to the port beam, and 
 Number 25, still pitching with the thrust through the 
 seas, also began to roll. This meant, of course, that
 
 274 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 the steamer had changed its course and was making 
 almost due north. It seemed to Alan to force its 
 engines faster ; the deck vibrated more. Alan had not 
 heard the orders for this change and could only specu- 
 late as to what it might mean. 
 
 His relief came after a few minutes more. 
 
 " Where are we heading? " Alan asked. 
 
 " Radio," the relief announced. " The H. C. Rich- 
 ardson calling; she's up by the Manitous." 
 
 "What sort of trouble?" 
 
 " She's not in trouble ; it's another ship." 
 
 "What ship?" 
 
 " No word as to that." 
 
 Alan, not delaying to question further, went back to 
 the cabins. 
 
 These stretched aft, behind the bridge, along the 
 upper deck, some score on each side of the ship ; they 
 had accommodations for almost a hundred passengers ; 
 but on this crossing only a few were occupied. Alan 
 had noticed some half dozen men business men, no 
 doubt, forced to make the crossing and, one of them, a 
 Catholic priest, returning probably to some mission in 
 the north ; he had seen no women among them. A little 
 group of passengers were gathered now in the door of 
 or just outside the wireless cabin, which was one of the 
 row on the starboard side. Stewards stood with them 
 and the cabin maid ; within, and bending over the table 
 with the radio instrument, was the operator with the 
 second officer beside him. The violet spark was rasp- 
 ing, and the operator, his receivers strapped over his 
 ears, strained to listen. He got no reply, evidently, 
 and he struck his key again; now, as he listened, he 
 wrote slowly on a pad.
 
 A GHOST SHIP 275 
 
 "You got 'em?" some one cried. "You got 'em 
 now? " 
 
 The operator continued to write; the second mate, 
 reading, shook his head, " It's only the Richardson 
 again." 
 
 " What is it? " Alan asked the officer. 
 
 " The Richardson heard four blasts of a steam 
 whistle about an hour ago when she was opposite the 
 Manitous. She answered with the whistle and turned 
 toward the blasts. She couldn't find any ship." The 
 officer's reply was interrupted by some of the others. 
 " Then . . . that was a few minutes ago . . . they 
 heard the four long again. . . . They'd tried to pick 
 up the other ship with radio before. . . . Yes ; we got 
 that here. . . . Tried again and got no answer. . . . 
 But they heard the blasts for half an hour. . . . They 
 said they seemed to be almost beside the ship once. . . . 
 But they didn't see anything. Then the blasts stopped 
 . . . sudden, cut off short in the middle as though 
 something happened. . . . She was blowing distress all 
 right. . . . The Richardson's searching again now. 
 . . . Yes, she's searching for boats." 
 
 "Any one else answered?" Alan asked. 
 
 " Shore stations on both sides." 
 
 "Do they know what ship it is? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " What ship might be there now? " 
 v The officer could not answer that. He had known 
 where the Richardson must be; he knew of no other 
 likely to be there at this season. The spray from the 
 waves had frozen upon Alan ; ice gleamed and glinted 
 from the rail and from the deck. Alan's shoulders 
 drew up in a spasm. The Richardson, they said, was
 
 276 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 looking for boats ; how long could men live in little 
 boats exposed to that gale and cold? 
 
 He turned back to the others about the radio cabin ; 
 the glow from within showed him faces as gray as his ; 
 it lighted a face on the opposite side of the door a 
 face haggard with dreadful fright. Old Burr jerked 
 about as Alan spoke to him and 'moved away alone; 
 Alan followed him and seized his arm. 
 
 "What's the matter?" Alan demanded, holding to 
 him. 
 
 "The four blasts!" the wheelsman repeated. 
 " They heard the four blasts ! " He iterated it once more. 
 
 "Yes," Alan urged. "Why not?" 
 
 " But where no ship ought to be ; so they couldn't 
 find the ship they couldn't find the ship ! " Terror, 
 of awful abjectness, came over the old man. He freed 
 himself from Alan and went forward. 
 
 Alan followed him to the quarters of the crew, where 
 night lunch for the men relieved from watch had been 
 set out, and took a seat at the table opposite him. 
 The louder echoing of the steel hull and the roll and 
 pitching of the vessel, which set the table with its dishes 
 swaying, showed that the sea was still increasing, and 
 also that they were now meeting heavier ice. At the 
 table men computed that Number 25 had now made 
 some twenty miles north off its course, and must there- 
 fore be approaching the neighborhood where the dis- 
 tress signals had been heard ; they speculated uselessly 
 as to what ship could have been in that part of the lake 
 and made the signals. Old Burr took no part in this 
 conversation, but listened to it with frightened eyes, 
 and presently got up and went away, leaving his coffee 
 unfinished.
 
 A GHOST SHIP 277 
 
 Number 25 was blowing its steam whistle again at 
 the end of every minute. 
 
 Alan, after taking a second cup of coffee, went aft 
 to the car deck. The roar and echoing tumult of the 
 ice against the hull here drowned all other sounds. 
 The thirty-two freight cars, in their four long lines, 
 stood wedged and chained and blocked in place; they 
 tipped and tilted, rolled and swayed like the stanch- 
 ions and sides of the ship, fixed and secure. Jacks on 
 the steel deck under the edges of the cars, kept them 
 from rocking on their trucks. Men paced watchfully 
 between the tracks, observing the movement of the cars. 
 The cars creaked and groaned, as they worked a little 
 this way and that; the men sprang with sledges and 
 drove the blocks tight again or took an additional turn 
 upon the jacks. 
 
 As Alan ascended and went forward to his duty, the 
 increase in the severity of the gale was very evident; 
 the thermometer, the wheelsman said, had dropped 
 below zero. Ice was making rapidly on the hull of the 
 ferry, where the spray, flying thicker through the snow, 
 was freezing as it struck. The deck was all ice now 
 underfoot, and the rails were swollen to great gleaming 
 slabs which joined and grew together; a parapet of ice 
 had appeared on the bow; and all about the swirling 
 snow screen shut off everything. A searchlight which 
 had flared from the bridge while Alan was below, 
 pierced that screen not a ship's length ahead, or on the 
 beam, before the glare dimmed to a glow which served 
 to show no more than the fine, flying pellets of the 
 storm. Except for the noise of the wind and the water, 
 there had been no echo from beyond that screen since 
 the shore signals were lost ; now a low, far-away sound
 
 fen THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 came down the wind; it maintained itself for a few sec- 
 onds, ceased, and then came again, and continued at 
 uneven intervals longer than the timed blasts of Num- 
 ber 25's whistle. It might be the horn of some strug- 
 gling sailing vessel, which in spite of the storm and the 
 closed season was braving the seas; at the end of each 
 interval of silence, the horn blew twice now; the echo 
 came abeam, passed astern, and was no longer to be 
 heard. How far away its origin had been, Alan could 
 only guess; probably the sailing vessel, away to wind- 
 ward, had not heard the whistle of Number 25 at alL 
 
 Alan saw old Burr who, on his way to the wheel- 
 house, had halted to listen too. For several minutes 
 the old man stood motionless; be came on again and 
 stopped to listen. There had been no sound for quite 
 five minutes now. 
 
 "Yon bear 'em?" Burr's voice quavered in Alan's 
 ear. " You hear 'em? " 
 
 "What?" Alan asked. 
 
 "The four blasts! You hear 'em now? The four 
 blasts!" 
 
 Burr was straining as be listened, and Alan stood 
 stiD too; no sound came to him but the noise of the 
 storm. " No," be replied. I don't hear anything. 
 Do you hear them now? " 
 
 Burr stood beside him without making reply; the 
 searchlight, which had been pointed abeam, shot its 
 glare forward, and Alan could see Burr's face in the 
 dancing reflection of the flare. The man had never 
 more plainly resembled the picture of Benjamin Corvet ; 
 that which had been in the picture, that strange sensa- 
 tion of something haunting him, was upon this man's 
 face, a thousand times intensified; but instead of dis-
 
 A GHOST SHIP 279 
 
 torting the features away from all likeness to the pic- 
 ture, it made it grotesquely identical. 
 
 And Burr was hearing something something dis- 
 tinct and terrifying; but he seemed not surprised, but 
 rather satisfied that Alan had not heard. He nodded 
 iiis head at Alan's denial, and, without reply to Alan's 
 demand, he stood listening. Something bent him for- 
 ward; he straightened; again the something came; 
 again he straightened. Four times Alan counted the 
 motions. Burr was hearing again the four long blasts 
 of distress! But there was no noise but the gale. 
 "The four blasts!" He recalled old Burr's terror 
 outside the radio cabin. The old man was hearing 
 blasts which were not blown ! 
 
 He moved on and took the wheel. He was a good 
 wheelsman ; the vessel seemed to be steadier on her 
 course and, somehow, to steam easier when the old 
 man steered. His illusions of hearing could do no 
 harm, Alan considered; they were of concern only to 
 Burr and to him. 
 
 Alan, relieving the lookout at the bow, stood on 
 watch again. The ferry thrust on alone; in the wire- 
 less cabin the flame played steadily. They had been 
 able to get the shore stations again on both sides of the 
 lake and also the Richardson. As the ferry had 
 worked northward, the Richardson had been working 
 north too, evidently under the impression that the 
 vessel in distress, if it had headway, was moving in that 
 direction. By its position, which the Richardson gave, 
 the steamers were about twenty miles apart. 
 
 Alan fought to keep his thought all to his duty ; they 
 must be now very nearly at the position where the Rich- 
 ardson last had heard the four long blasts ; searching
 
 282 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 now, and he made no resistance to the skipper's blows ; 
 but the skipper, in his frenzy, struck him again and 
 knocked him to the deck. 
 
 Slowly, steadily, Number 25 was responding to her 
 helm. The bow pointed away, and the beam of the 
 ferry came beside the beam of the silent steamer ; they 
 were very close now, so close that the searchlight, which 
 had turned to keep on, the other vessel, shot above its 
 shimmering deck and lighted only the spars ; and, as 
 the water rose and fell between them, the ships sucked 
 closer. Number 25 shook with an effort; it seemed 
 opposing with all the power of its screws some force 
 fatally drawing it on opposing with the last resist- 
 ance before giving way. Then, as the water fell again, 
 the ferry seemed to slip and be drawn toward the other 
 vessel; they mounted, side by side . . . crashed . . . 
 recoiled . . . crashed again. That second crash 
 threw all who had nothing to hold by, flat upon the 
 deck; then Number 25 moved by; astern her now the 
 silent steamer vanished in the snow. 
 
 Gongs boomed below ; through the new confusion and 
 the cries of men, orders began to become audible. 
 Alan, scrambling to his knees, put an arm under old 
 Burr, half raising him ; the form encircled by his arm 
 struggled up. The skipper, who had knocked Burr 
 away from the wheel, ignored him now. The old man, 
 dragging himself up and holding to Alan, was staring 
 with terror at the snow screen behind which the vessel 
 had disappeared. His lips moved.' 
 
 " It was a ship! " he said; he seemed 3Deaking more 
 to himself than to Alan. 
 
 " Yes " ; Alan said. " It was a ship ; and you 
 thought "
 
 A GHOST SHIP 283 
 
 " It wasn't there ! " the wheelsman cried. " It's 
 it's been there all the time all night, and I'd I'd 
 steered through it ten times, twenty times, every few 
 minutes ; and then that time it was a ship ! " 
 
 Alan's excitement grew greater ; ho seized the old man 
 again. " You thought it was the Mizeaka! " Alan ex- 
 claimed. " The Miwaka! And you tried to steer 
 through it again." 
 
 " The Miwaka! " old Burr's lips reiterated the word. 
 " Yes ; yes the Miwaka! " 
 
 He struggled, writhing with some agony not physi- 
 cal. Alan tried to hold him, but now the old man was 
 beside himself with dismay. He broke away and 
 started aft. The captain's voice recalled Alan to him- 
 self, as he was about to follow, and he turned back to 
 the wheelhouse. 
 
 The mate was at the wheel. He shouted to the cap- 
 tain about following the other ship ; neither of them 
 had seen sign of any one aboard it. " Derelict ! " the 
 skipper thought. The mate was swinging Number 25 
 about to follow and look at the ship again; and the 
 searchlight beam swept back and forth through the 
 snow ; the blasts of the steam whistle, which had ceased 
 after the collision, burst out again. As before, no 
 response came from behind the snow. The searchlight 
 picked up the silent ship again; it had settled down 
 deeper now by the bow, Alan saw; the blow from Num- 
 ber 25 had robbed it of its last buoyancy ; it was sink- 
 ing. It dove down, then rose a little sounds came 
 from it now sudden, explosive sounds ; air pressure 
 within hurled up a hatch ; the tops of the cabins blew 
 off, and the stem of the ship slipped down deep again, 
 stopped, then dove without halt or recovery this time,
 
 282 , THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 now, and he made no resistance to the skipper's blows ; 
 but the skipper, in his frenzy, struck him again and 
 knocked him to the deck. 
 
 Slowly, steadily, Number 25 was responding to her 
 helm. The bow pointed away, and the beam of the 
 ferry came beside the beam of the silent steamer; they 
 were very close now, so close that the searchlight, which 
 had turned to keep on, the other vessel, shot above its 
 shimmering deck and lighted only the spars ; and, as 
 the water rose and fell between them, the ships sucked 
 closer. Number 25 shook with an effort; it seemed 
 opposing with all the power of its screws some force 
 fatally drawing it on opposing with the last resist- 
 ance before giving way. Then, as the water fell again, 
 the ferry seemed to slip and be drawn toward the other 
 vessel; they mounted, side by side . . . crashed . . . 
 recoiled . . . crashed again. That second crash 
 threw all who had nothing to hold by, flat upon the 
 deck; then Number 25 moved by; astern her now the 
 silent steamer vanished in the snow. 
 
 Gongs boomed below ; through the new confusion and 
 the cries of men, orders began to become audible. 
 Alan, scrambling to his knees, put an arm under old 
 Burr, half raising him ; the form encircled by his arm 
 struggled up. The skipper, who had knocked Burr 
 away from the wheel, ignored him now. The old man, 
 dragging himself up and holding to Alan, was staring 
 with terror at the snow screen behind which the vessel 
 had disappeared. His lips moved.- 
 
 " It was a ship ! " he said ; he seemed sneaking more 
 to himself than to Alan. 
 
 " Yes " ; Alan said. " It was a ship ; and you 
 thought "
 
 A GHOST SHIP 283 
 
 "It wasn't there!" the wheelsman cried. "It's- 
 it's been there all the time all night, and I'd I'd 
 steered through it ten times, twenty times, every few 
 minutes ; and then that time it was a ship ! " 
 
 Alan's excitement grew greater ; he seized the old man 
 again. " You thought it was the Miwaka! " Alan ex- 
 claimed. " The Miwakat And you tried to steer 
 through it again." 
 
 " The MiwaJca! " old Burr's lips reiterated the word. 
 " Yes ; yes the Mirvaka! " 
 
 He struggled, writhing with some agony not physi- 
 cal. Alan tried to hold him, but now the old man was 
 beside himself with dismay. He broke away and 
 started aft. The captain's voice recalled Alan to him- 
 self, as he was about to follow, and he turned back to 
 the wheelhouse. 
 
 The mate was at the wheel. He shouted to the cap- 
 tain about following the other ship ; neither of them 
 had seen sign of any one aboard it. " Derelict ! " the 
 skipper thought. The mate was swinging Number 25 
 about to follow and look at the ship again; and the 
 searchlight beam swept back and forth through the 
 snow ; the blasts of the steam whistle, which had ceased 
 after the collision, burst out again. As before, no 
 response came from behind the snow. The searchlight 
 picked up the silent ship again; it had settled down 
 deeper now by the bow, Alan saw; the blow from Num- 
 ber 25 had robbed it of its last buoyancy ; it was sink- 
 ing. It dove down, then rose a little sounds came 
 from it now sudden, explosive sounds ; air pressure 
 within hurled up a hatch ; the tops of the cabins blew 
 off, and the stem of the ship slipped down deep again, 
 stopped, then dove without halt or recovery this time,
 
 284 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 and the stern, upraised with the screw motionless, met 
 the high wash of a wave, and went down with it and dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 No man had shown himself ; no shout had been heard ; 
 no little boat was seen or signalled. 
 
 The second officer, who had gone below to ascertain 
 the damage done to the ferry, came up to report. Two 
 of the compartments, those which had taken the crush 
 of the collision, had flooded instantly; the bulkheads 
 were holding only leaking a little, the officer de- 
 clared. Water was coming into a third compartment, 
 that at the stern ; the pumps were fighting this water. 
 The shock had sprung seams elsewhere ; but if the after 
 compartment did not fill, the pumps might handle the 
 rest. 
 
 Soddenness already was coming into the response of 
 Number 25 to the lift of the waves; the ferry rolled 
 less to the right as she came about, beam to the waves, 
 and she dropped away more dully and deeply to the 
 left ; the ship was listing to port and the lift of the ice- 
 heaped bow told of settling by the stern. Slowly Num- 
 ber 25 circled about, her engines holding bare headway ; 
 the radio, Alan heard, was sending to the Richardson 
 and to the shore stations word of the finding and sink- 
 ing of the ship and of the damage done to Number 25 ; 
 whether that damage yet was described in the dis- 
 patches as disaster, Alan did not know. The steam 
 whistle, which continued to roar, maintained the single, 
 separated blasts of a ship still seaworthy and able to 
 steer and even to give assistance. Alan was at the 
 bow again on lookout duty, ordered to listen and to 
 look for the little boats. 
 
 He gave to that duty all his conscious attention ; but
 
 A GHOST SHIP 285 
 
 through his thought, whether he willed it or not, ran 
 a riotous exultation. As he paced from side to side 
 and hailed and answered hails from the bridge, and 
 while he strained for sight and hearing through the 
 gale-swept snow, the leaping pulse within repeated, 
 " I've found him ! I've found him ! " Alan held no 
 longer possibility of doubt of old Burr's identity with 
 Benjamin Corvet, since the old man had made plain to 
 him that he was haunted by the M'w&aka. Since that 
 night in the house on Astor Street, when Spearman 
 shouted to Alan that name, everything having to do 
 with the secret of Benjamin Corvet's life had led, so far 
 as Alan could follow it, to the Miwaka; all the change, 
 which Sherrill described but could not account for, Alan 
 had laid to that. Corvet only could have been so 
 haunted by that ghostly ship, and there had been guilt 
 of some awful sort in the old man's cry. Alan had 
 found the man who had sent him away to Kansas when 
 he was a child, who had supported him there and then, 
 at last, sent for him ; who had disappeared at his com- 
 ing and left him all his possessions and his heritage of 
 disgrace, who had paid blackmail to Luke, and who had 
 sent, last, Captain Stafford's watch and the ring which 
 came with it the wedding ring. 
 
 Alan pulled his hand from his glove and felt in his 
 pocket for the little band of gold. What would that 
 mean to him now; what of that was he to learn? And, 
 as he thought of that, Constance Sherrill came more 
 insistently before him. What was he to learn for her, 
 for his friend and Benjamin Corvet's friend, whom he, 
 Uncle Benny, had warned not to care for Henry Spear- 
 man, and then had gone away to leave her to marry 
 him? For she was to marry him, Alan had read.
 
 286 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 It was with this that cold terror suddenly closed over 
 him. Would he learn anything now from Benjamin 
 Corvet, though he had found him? Only for an in- 
 stant a fleeting instant had Benjamin Corvet's 
 brain become clear as to the cause of his hallucination ; 
 consternation had overwhelmed him then, and he 
 struggled free to attempt to mend the damage he had 
 done. 
 
 More serious damage than first reported! The 
 pumps certainly must be losing their fight with the 
 water in the port compartment aft ; for the bow stead- 
 ily was lifting, the stern sinking. The starboard rail 
 too was raised, and the list had become so sharp 
 that water washed the deck abaft the forecastle to 
 port. And the ferry was pointed straight into the gale 
 now; long ago she had ceased to circle and steam 
 slowly in search for boats ; she struggled with all her 
 power against the wind and the seas, a desperate insist- 
 ence throbbing in the thrusts of the engines ; for Num- 
 ber 25 was fleeing fleeing for the western shore. 
 She dared not turn to the nearer eastern shore to 
 expose that shattered stern to the seas. 
 
 Four bells beat behind Alan ; it was two o'clock. Re- 
 lief should have come long before ; but no one came. 
 He was numbed now ; ice from the spray crackled upon 
 his clothing when he moved, and it fell in flakes upon 
 the deck. The stark figure on the bridge was that of 
 the second officer ; so the thing which was happening 
 below the thing which was sending strange, violent, 
 wanton tremors through the ship was serious enough 
 to call the skipper below, to make him abandon the 
 bridge at this time ! The tremors, quite distinct from 
 the steady tremble of the engines and the thudding of
 
 A GHOST SHIP 287 
 
 the pumps, came again. Alan, feeling them, jerked up 
 and stamped and beat his arms to regain sensation. 
 Some one stumbled toward him from the cabins now, a 
 short figure in a great coat. It was a woman, he saw 
 as she hailed him the cabin maid. 
 
 " Fm taking your place ! " she shouted to Alan. 
 " You're wanted every one's wanted on the car deck ! 
 The cars " The gale and her fright stopped her 
 voice as she struggled for speech, " The cars the 
 cars are loose ! "
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 " HE KILLED YOUR FATHER " 
 
 ALAN ran aft along the starboard side, catching 
 at the rail as the deck tilted; the sounds within 
 the hull and the tremors following each sound 
 came to him more distinctly as he advanced. Taking 
 the shortest way to the car deck, he turned into the 
 cabins to reach the passengers' companionway. The 
 noises from the car deck, no longer muffled by the 
 cabins, clanged and resounded in terrible tumult; with 
 the clang and rumble of metal, rose shouts and roars 
 of men. 
 
 To liberate and throw overboard heavily loaded cars 
 from an endangered ship was so desperate an under- 
 taking and so certain to cost life that men attempted 
 it only in final extremities, when the ship must be 
 lightened at any cost. Alan had never seen the effect 
 of such an attempt, but he had heard of it as the fear 
 which sat always on the hearts of the men who navi- 
 gate the ferries the cars loose on a rolling, lurching 
 ship! He was going to that now. Two figures ap- 
 peared before him, one half supporting, half dragging 
 the other. Alan sprang and offered aid; but the in- 
 jured man called to him to go on; others needed him. 
 Alan went past them and down the steps to the car 
 deck. Half-way down, the priest whom he had noticed 
 among the passengers stood staring aft, a tense, black
 
 " HE KILLED YOUR FATHER " 289 
 
 figure; beside him other passengers were clinging to 
 the handrail and staring down in awestruck fascination. 
 The lowest steps had been crushed back and half up- 
 torn; some monstrous, inanimate thing was battering 
 about below ; but the space at the foot of the steps was 
 clear at that moment. Alan leaped over the ruin of the 
 steps and down upon the car deck. 
 
 A giant iron casting six feet high and yards across 
 and tons in weight, tumbled and ground before him; it 
 was this which had swept away the steps ; he had seen 
 it, with two others like it, upon a flat car which had 
 been shunted upon one of the tracks on the starboard 
 side of the ferry, one of the tracks on his left now as 
 he faced the stern. He leaped upon and over the 
 great casting, which turned and spun with the motion 
 of the ship as he vaulted it. The car deck was a pitch- 
 ing, swaying slope ; the cars nearest him were still upon 
 their tracks, but they tilted and swayed uglily from 
 side to side; the jacks were gone from under them; the 
 next cars already were hurled from the rails, their 
 wheels screaming on the steel deck, clanging and thud- 
 ding together in their couplings. 
 
 Alan ran aft between them. All the crew who could 
 be called from deck and engine room and firehold were 
 struggling at the fantail, under the direction of the 
 captain, to throw off the cars. The mate was working 
 as one of the men, and with him was Benjamin Corvet. 
 The crew already must have loosened and thrown over 
 the stern three cars from the two tracks on the port 
 side; for there was a space vacant; and as the train 
 charged into that space and the men threw themselves 
 upon it, Alan leaped with them. 
 
 The leading car a box car, heavily laden
 
 290 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 swayed and shrieked with the pitching of the ship. 
 Corvet sprang between it and the car coupled behind; 
 he drew out the pin from the coupling, and the men 
 with pinch-bars attacked the car to isolate it and force 
 it aft along the track. It moved slowly at first; 
 then leaped its length; sharply with the lift of the 
 deck, it stopped, toppled toward the men who, yelling 
 to one another, scrambled away. The hundred-ton 
 mass swung from side to side ; the ship dropped swiftly 
 to starboard, and the stern went down ; the car 
 charged, and its aftermost wheels left the deck; it 
 swung about, slewed, and jammed across both port 
 tracks. The men attacked it with dismay; Corvet's 
 shout called them away and rallied them farther back; 
 they ran with him to the car from which he had un- 
 coupled it. 
 
 It was a flat car laden with steel beams. At Corvet's 
 command, the crew ranged themselves beside it with 
 bars. The bow of the ferry rose to some great wave 
 and, with a cry to the men, Corvet pulled the pin. The 
 others thrust with their bars, and the car slid down the 
 sloping track; and Corvet, caught by some lashing of 
 the beams, came with it. The car crashed into the box 
 car, splintered it, turned it, shoved it, and thrust it 
 over the f antail into the water ; the flat car, telescoped 
 into it, was dragged after. Alan leaped upon it and 
 catching at Corvet, freed him and flung him down to the 
 deck, and dropped with him. A cheer rose as the car 
 cleared the fantail, dove, and disappeared. 
 
 Alan clambered to his feet. Corvet already was back 
 among the cars again, shouting orders; the mate and 
 the men who had followed him before leaped at his 
 yells. The lurch which had cleared the two cars
 
 " HE KILLED YOUR FATHER " 291 
 
 together had jumped others away from the rails. 
 They hurtled from side to side, splintering against the 
 stanchions which stayed them from crashing across 
 the center line of the ship; rebounding, they battered 
 against the cars on the outer tracks and crushed them 
 against the side of the ship. The wedges, blocks, and 
 chains which had secured them banged about on the 
 deck, useless ; the men who tried to control these cars, 
 dodging as they charged, no longer made attempt to 
 secure the wheels. Corvet called them to throw ropes 
 and chains to bind the loads which were letting go ; the 
 heavier loads steel beams, castings, machinery 
 snapped their lashings, tipped from their flat cars and 
 thundered down the deck. The cars tipped farther, 
 turned over; others balanced back; it was upon their 
 wheels that they charged forward, half riding one 
 another, crashing and demolishing, as the ferry 
 pitched ; it was upon their trucks that they tottered 
 and battered from side to side as the deck swayed. 
 Now the stern again descended; a line of cars swept 
 for the fantail. Corvet's cry came to Alan through 
 the screaming of steel and the clangor of destruction. 
 Corvet's cry sent men with bars beside the cars as the 
 fantail dipped into the water; Corvet, again leading 
 his crew, cleared the leader of those madly charging 
 cars and ran it over the stern. 
 
 The fore trucks fell and, before the rear trucks 
 reached the edge, the stern lifted and caught the car 
 in the middle; it balanced, half over the water, half 
 over the deck. Corvet crouched under the car with 
 a crowbar; Alan and two others went with him; they 
 worked the car on until the weight of the end over the 
 water tipped it down; the balance broke, and the car
 
 292 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 tumbled and dived. Corvet, having cleared another 
 hundred tons, leaped back, calling to the crew. 
 
 They followed him again, unquestioning, obedient. 
 Alan followed close to him. It was not pity which 
 stirred him now for Benjamin Corvet; nor was it bit- 
 terness ; but it certainly was not contempt. Of all the 
 ways in which he had fancied finding Benjamin Corvet, 
 he had never thought of seeing him like this ! 
 
 It was, probably, only for a flash; but the great 
 quality of leadership which he once had possessed, which 
 Sherrill had described to Alan and which had been de- 
 stroyed by the threat over him, had returned to him in 
 this desperate emergency which he had created. , How 
 much or how little of his own condition Corvet under- 
 stood, Alan could not tell; it was plain only that he 
 comprehended that he had been the cause of the catas- 
 trophe, and in his fierce will to repair it he not only 
 disregarded all risk to himself;- he also had summoned 
 up from within him and was spending the last strength 
 of his spirit. But he was spending it in a losing fight. 
 
 He got off two more cars ; yet the deck only dipped 
 lower, and water washed farther and farther up over 
 the fantail. New avalanches of iron descended as box 
 cars above burst open; monstrous dynamo drums, 
 broad-banded steel wheels and splintered crates of 
 machinery battered about. Men, leaping from before 
 the charging cars, got caught in the murderous melee 
 of iron and steel and wheels; men's shrill cries came 
 amid the scream of metal. Alan, tugging at a crate 
 which had struck down a man, felt aid beside him and, 
 turning, he saw the priest whom he had passed on the 
 stairs. The priest was bruised and bloody; this was 
 not his first effort to aid. Together they lifted an
 
 " HE KILLED YOUR FATHER " 293 
 
 end of the crate; they bent Alan stepped back, and 
 the priest knelt alone, his lips repeating the prayer for 
 absolution. Screams of men came from behind; and 
 the priest rose and turned. He saw men caught be- 
 tween two wrecks of cars crushing together ; there was 
 no moment to reach them ; he stood and raised his arms 
 to them, his head thrown back, his voice calling to 
 them, as they died, the words of absolution. 
 
 Three more cars at the cost of two more lives the 
 crew cleared, while the sheathing of ice spread over the 
 steel inboard, and dissolution of all the cargo became 
 complete. Cut stone and motor parts, chasses and 
 castings, furniture and beams, swept back and forth, 
 while the cars, burst and splintered, became monstrous 
 missiles hurtling forward, sidewise, aslant, recoiling. 
 Yet men, though scattered singly, tried to stay them 
 by ropes and chains while the water washed higher and 
 higher. Dimly, far away, deafened out by the clangor, 
 the steam whistle of Number 25 was blowing the four 
 long blasts of distress ; Alan heard the sound now and 
 then with indifferent wonder. All destruction had 
 come for him to be contained within this car deck ; here 
 the ship loosed on itself all elements of annihilation ; 
 who could aid it from Avithout? Alan caught the end 
 of a chain which Corvet flung him and, though he knew 
 it was useless, he carried it across from one stanchion 
 to the next. Something, sweeping across the deck, 
 caught him and carried him with it ; it brought him be- 
 fore the coupled line of trucks which hurtled back and 
 forth where the rails of track three had been. He was 
 hurled before them and rolled over ; something cold and 
 heavy pinned him down ; and upon him, the car trucks 
 came.
 
 294 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 But, before them, something warm and living a 
 hand and bare arm catching him quickly and pulling 
 at him, tugged him a little farther on. Alan, looking 
 up, saw Corvet beside him; Corvet, unable to move 
 him farther, was crouching down there with him. Alan 
 yelled to him to leap, to twist aside and get out of the 
 way ; but Corvet only crouched closer and put his arms 
 over Alan ; then the wreckage came upon them, driving 
 them apart. As the movement stopped, Alan still 
 could see Corvet dimly by the glow of the incandescent 
 lamps overhead; the truck separated them. It bore 
 down upon Alan, holding him motionless and, on the 
 other side, it crushed upon Corvet's legs. 
 
 He turned over, as far as he could, and spoke to 
 Alan. " You have been saving me, so now I tried to 
 save you," he said simply. "What reason did you 
 have for doing that? Why have you been keeping by 
 me? " 
 
 " I'm Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids, Kansas," Alan 
 cried to him. "And you're Benjamin Corvet! You 
 know me ; you sent for me ! Why did you do that ? " 
 
 Corvet made no reply to this. Alan, peering at him 
 underneath the truck, could see that his hands were 
 pressed against his face and that his body shook. 
 Whether this was from some new physical pain from 
 the movement of the wreckage, Alan did not know till 
 he lowered his hands after a moment; and now he did 
 not heed Alan or seem even to be aware of him. 
 
 " Dear little Connie! " he said aloud. " Dear little 
 Connie! She mustn't marry him not him! That 
 must be seen to. What shall I do, what shall I 
 do?" 
 
 Alan worked nearer him. " Why mustn't she marry
 
 HE KILLED YOUR FATHER " 295 
 
 Km? he cried to Corvet. Why? Ben Corvet, tell 
 
 me ! Tell me why ! " 
 
 From above him, through the ciangor of the cars, 
 came the four blasts of the steam whistle. The indif- 
 ference with which Alan had heard them a few minutes 
 before had changed now to a twinge of terror. When 
 men had been dying about him, in their attempts to 
 save the ship, it had seemed a small thing for him to 
 be crushed or to drown with them and with Benjamin 
 Corvet, whom he had found at last. But Constance! 
 Recollection of her was stirring in Corvet the torture 
 of will to live ; in Alan he struggled and tried to free 
 himself. As well as he could tell by feeling, the 
 weight above him confined but was not crushing him; 
 yet what gain for her if he only saved himself and 
 not Corvet too? He turned back to Corvet. 
 
 " She's going to marry him, Ben Corvet ! " he called. 
 " They're betrothed ; and they're going to be married, 
 she and Henry Spearman ! " 
 
 *' Who are you? " Corvet seemed only with an effort 
 to become conscious of Alan's presence. 
 
 " I'm Alan Conrad, whom you used to take care of. 
 I'm from Blue Rapids. You know about me; are you 
 my father, Ben Corvet? Are you my father or what 
 what are you to me ? " 
 
 " Your father? " Corvet repeated. " Did he tell you 
 that? He killed your father." 
 
 " Killed him ? Killed him how ? " 
 
 "Of course. He killed them all all. But your 
 father he shot him ; he shot him through the head ! " 
 
 Alan twinged. Sight of Spearman came before him 
 as he had first seen Spearman, cowering in Corvet's li- 
 brary in terror at an apparition. " And the bullet
 
 296 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 hole above the eye ! " So that was the hole made by 
 the shot Spearman fired which had killed Alan's father 
 
 which shot him through the head! Alan peered at 
 Corvet and called to him. 
 
 " Father Benitot ! " Corvet called in response, not 
 directly in reply to Alan's question, rather in response 
 to what those questions stirred. " Father Benitot ! " 
 he appealed. " Father Benitot!" 
 
 Some one, drawn by the cry, was moving wreckage 
 near them. A hand and arm with a torn sleeve showed ; 
 Alan could not see the rest of the figure, but by the 
 sleeve he recognized that it was the mate. 
 
 "Who's caught here?" he called down. 
 
 "Benjamin Corvet of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spear- 
 man, ship owners of Chicago," Corvet's voice replied 
 deeply, fully ; there was authority in it and wonder too 
 
 the wonder of a man finding himself in a situation 
 which his recollection cannot explain. 
 
 " Ben Corvet ! " the mate shouted in surprise ; he 
 cried it to the others, those who had followed Corvet 
 and obeyed him during the hour before and had not 
 known why. The mate tried to pull the wreckage aside 
 and make his way to Corvet ; but the old man stopped 
 him. " The priest, Father Benitot ! Send him to me. 
 I shall never leave here ; send Father Benitot ! " 
 
 The word was passed without the mate moving away. 
 The mate, after a minute, made no further attempt to 
 free Corvet; that indeed was useless, and Corvet de- 
 manded his right of sacrament from the priest who 
 came and crouched under the wreckage beside him. 
 
 "Father Benitot!" 
 
 " I am not Father Benitot. I am Father Perron of 
 L'Anse."
 
 " HE KILLED YOUR FATHER " 297 
 
 It was to Father Benitot of St, Ignace I should 
 have gone, Father! . . ." 
 
 The priest got a little closer as Corvet spoke, and Alan 
 heard only voices now and then through the sounds of 
 clanging metal and the drum of ice against the hull. 
 The mate and his helpers were working to get him free. 
 They had abandoned all effort to save the ship ; it was 
 settling. And with the settling, the movement of the 
 wreckage imprisoning Alan was increasing. This 
 movement made useless the efforts of the mate ; it would 
 free Alan of itself in a moment, if it did not kill him; 
 it would free or finish Corvet too. But he, as Alan 
 saw him, was wholly oblivious of that now. His lips 
 moved quietly, firmly; and his eyes were fixed steadily 
 on the eyes of the priest.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES XORTH 
 
 THE message, in blurred lettering and upon the 
 flimsy tissue paper of a carbon copy that 
 message which had brought tension to the 
 offices of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman and had 
 called Constance Sherrill and her mother downtown 
 where further information could be more quickly ob- 
 tained was handed to Constance by a clerk as soon 
 as she entered her father's office. She reread it; it 
 already had been repeated to her over the telephone. 
 
 " 4 :05 A. M. Frankfort Wireless station has re- 
 ceived following message from No. 25 : ' We have Ben- 
 jamin Corvet, of Chicago, aboard.' " 
 
 " You've received nothing later than this ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " Nothing regarding Mr. Corvet, Miss Sherrill," the 
 clerk replied. 
 
 " Or regarding Have you obtained a passenger 
 list?" 
 
 " No passenger list was kept, Miss Sherrill." 
 
 " The crew? ?> 
 
 "Yes; we have just got the names of the crew." 
 He took another copied sheet from among the pages 
 and handed it to her, and she looked swiftly down the 
 list of names until she found that of Alan Conrad. 
 
 Her eyes filled, blinding her, as she put the paper
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH 299 
 
 down, and began to take off her things. She had been 
 clinging determinedly in her thought to the belief that 
 Alan might not have been aboard the ferry. Alan's 
 mes&age, which had sent her father north to meet the 
 ship, had implied plainly that some one whom Alan 
 believed might be Uncle Benny was on Number 25 ; she 
 had been fighting, these last few hours, against convic- 
 tion that therefore Alan must be on the ferry too. 
 
 She stood by the desk, as the clerk went out, looking 
 through the papers which he had left with her. 
 
 " What do they say? " her mother asked. 
 
 Constance caught herself together. 
 
 " Wireless signals from No. 25," she read aloud, 
 " were plainly made out at shore stations at Ludington, 
 Manitowoc, and Frankfort until about four o'clock, 
 when " 
 
 " That is, until about six hours ago, Constance." 
 
 " Yes, mother, when the signals were interrupted. 
 The steamer Richardson, in response to whose signals 
 No. 25 made the change in her course which led to dis- 
 aster, was in communication until about four o'clock ; 
 Frankfort station picked up one message shortly after 
 four, and same message was also recorded by Carferry 
 Manitoulin in southern end of lake; subsequently all 
 efforts to call No. 25 failed of response until 4 :35 when 
 a message was picked up at once by Manitowoc, Frank- 
 fort, and the Richardson. Information, therefore, re- 
 garding the fate of the ferry up to that hour received 
 at this office (Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman) con- 
 sists of the following . . ." 
 
 Constance stopped reading aloud and looked rapidly 
 down the sheet and then over the next. What she was 
 reading was the carbon of the report prepared that
 
 300 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 morning and sent, at his rooms, to Henry, who was not 
 yet down. It did not contain therefore the last that 
 was known; and she read only enough of it to be sure 
 of that. 
 
 " After 4 :10, to repeated signals to Number 25 from 
 Richardson and shore stations 'Are you in danger? ' 
 'Shall we send help?* 'Are you jettisoning cars?' 
 'What is your position?' no replies were received. 
 The Richardson continued therefore to signal, ' Report 
 your position and course ; we will stand by,' at the same 
 time making full speed toward last position given by 
 Number 25. At 4:35, no other message having been 
 obtained from Number 25 in the meantime, Manitowoc 
 and Frankfort both picked up the following: ' S. O. S. 
 Are taking water fast. S. O. S. Position probably 
 twenty miles west N. Fox. S. O. S.' The S. O. S. has 
 been repeated, but without further information since." 
 
 The report made to Henry ended here. Constance 
 picked up the later messages received in response to 
 orders to transmit to Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman 
 copies of all signals concerning Number 25 which had 
 been received or sent. She sorted out from them those 
 dated after the hour she just had read: 
 
 "4:40, Manitowoc is calling No. 25, 'No. 26 is 
 putting north to you. Keep in touch.' 
 
 "4:43, No. 26 is calling No. 25, 'What is your 
 position? ' 
 
 " 4 :50, the Richardson is calling No. 25, ' We must 
 be approaching you. Are you giving whistle signals? ' 
 
 " 4 :53, No. 25 is replying to Richardson, ' Yes ; will 
 continue to signal. Do you hear us?' 
 
 " 4 :59, Frankfort is calling No. 25, ' What is your 
 condition ? '
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH 301 
 
 " 5 :04, No. 25 is replying to Frankfort, ' Holding 
 bare headway ; stern very low.' 
 
 " 5 :10, No. 26 is calling No. 25, ' Are you throwing 
 off cars ? ' 
 
 " 5 :14, Petoskey is calling Manitowoc, ' We are re- 
 ceiving S.O.S. What is wrong? ' Petoskey has not 
 previously been in communication with shore stations 
 or ships. 
 
 " 5 :17, No. 25 is signalling No. 26, ' Are throwing 
 off cars ; have cleared eight ; work very difficult. We 
 are sinking.' 
 
 "5:20, No. 25 is calling the Richardson, 'Watch 
 for small boats. Position doubtful because of snow 
 and changes of course; probably due west N. Fox, 
 twenty to thirty miles.' 
 
 "5:24-, No. 26 is calling No. 25, 'Are you aban- 
 doning ship? ' 
 
 " 5 :27, No. 25 is replying to No. 26, ' Second boat 
 just getting safely away with passengers; first boat 
 was smashed. Six passengers in second boat, two in- 
 jured of crew, cabin maid, boy and two men.' 
 
 " 5 :30, Manitowoc and Frankfort are calling No. 
 25, ' Are you abandoning ship? ' 
 
 " 5 :34, No. 25 is replying to Manitowoc, ' Still try- 
 ing to clear cars; everything is loose below . . .' 
 
 " 5 :40, Frankfort is calling Manitowoc, ' Do you get 
 anything now ? ' 
 
 " 5 :45, Manitowoc is calling the Richardson, ' Do 
 you get anything? Signals have stopped here.' 
 
 " 5 :48, The Richardson is calling Petoskey, ' We get 
 nothing now. Do you? ' 
 
 "6:30, Petoskey is calling Manitowoc, 'Signals 
 after becoming indistinct, failed entirely about 5 :45,
 
 302 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 probably by failure of ship's power to supply current. 
 Operator appears to have remained at key. From 5 :25 
 to 5 :43 we received disconnected messages, as follows : 
 ' Have cleared another car . . . they are sticking to 
 it down there . . . engine-room crew is also sticking 
 . . . hell on car deck . . . everything smashed . . . 
 they won't give up ... sinking now . . . we're going 
 . . . good-by . . . stuck to end ... all they could 
 . . . know that . . . hand it to them . . . have 
 cleared another car . . . sink . . . S. O. . . . Sig- 
 nals then entirely ceased/ " 
 
 There was no more than this. Constance let the 
 papers fall back upon the desk and looked to her 
 mother; Mrs. Sherrill loosened her fur collar and sat 
 back, breathing more comfortably. Constance quickly 
 shifted her gaze and, trembling and with head erect, 
 she walked to the window and looked out. The mean- 
 ing of what she had read was quite clear; her mother 
 was formulating it. 
 
 " So they are both lost, Mr. Corvet and his son," 
 Mrs. Sherrill said quietly. 
 
 Constance did not reply, either to refuse or to con- 
 cur in the conclusion. There was not anything which 
 was meant to be merciless in that conclusion; her 
 mother simply was crediting what probably had oc- 
 curred. Constance could not in reason refuse to ac- 
 cept it too ; yet she was refusing it. She had not 
 realized, until these reports of the wireless messages 
 told her that he was gone, what companionship with 
 Alan had come to mean to her. She had accepted it 
 as always to be existent, somehow a companionship 
 which might be interrupted often but always to be 
 formed again. It amazed her to find how firm a place
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH 303 
 
 he had found in her world of those close to her with 
 whom she must always be intimately concerned. 
 
 Her mother arose and came beside her. " May it 
 not be better, Constance, that it has happened this 
 way?" 
 
 "Better!" Constance cried. She controlled her- 
 self. 
 
 It was only what Henry had said to her months 
 ago when Alan had left her in the north in the search 
 which had resulted in the finding of Uncle Benny 
 "Might it not be better for him not to find out?" 
 Henry, who could hazard more accurately than any one 
 else the nature of that strange secret which Alan now 
 must have " found out," had believed it ; her mother, 
 who at least had lived longer in the world than she, 
 also believed it. There came before Constance the vi- 
 sion of Alan's defiance and refusal to accept the stigma 
 suggested in her father's recital to him of his relation- 
 ship to Mr. Corvet. There came to her sight of him 
 as he had tried to keep her from entering Uncle Ben- 
 ny's house when Luke was there, and then her waiting 
 with him through the long hour and his dismissal of 
 her, his abnegation of their friendship. And at that 
 time his disgrace was indefinite; last night had he 
 learned something worse than he had dreaded? 
 
 The words of his telegram took for her more terri- 
 ble significance for the moment. " Have some one who 
 knew Mr. Corvet well enough to recognize him even if 
 greatly changed meet . . ." Were the broken, inco- 
 herent words of the wireless the last that she should 
 hear of him, and of Uncle Benny, after that? " They 
 are sticking to it ... down there . . . they won't 
 give up ... sinking . . . they have cleared another
 
 304 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 car . . . sink . . ." Had it come as the best way 
 for them both? 
 
 " The Richardson is searching for boats, mother," 
 Constance returned steadily, " and Number 26 must be 
 there too by now." 
 
 Her mother looked to the storm. Outside the win- 
 dow which overlooked the lake from two hundred feet 
 above the street, the sleet-like snow was driving cease- 
 lessly; all over the western basin of the great lakes, 
 as Constance knew over Huron, over Michigan, and 
 Superior the storm was established. Its continu- 
 ance and severity had claimed a front-page column in 
 the morning papers. Duluth that morning had re- 
 ported temperature of eighteen below zero and fierce 
 snow ; at Marquette it was fifteen below ; there was 
 driving snow at the Soo, at Mackinac, and at all ports 
 along both shores. She pictured little boats, at the 
 last moment, getting away from the ferry, deep-laden 
 with injured and exhausted men; how long might those 
 men live in open boats in a gale and with cold like 
 that? The little clock upon her father's desk marked 
 ten o'clock; they had been nearly five hours in the 
 boats now, those men. 
 
 Constance knew that as soon as anything new was 
 heard, it would be brought to her ; yet, with a word to 
 her mother, she went from her father's room and down 
 the corridor into the general office. A hush of expect- 
 ancy held this larger room; the clerks moved silently 
 and spoke to one another in low voices ; she recognized 
 in a little group of men gathered in a corner of the 
 room some officers of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman's 
 ships. Others among them, whom she did not know, 
 were plainly seamen too men who knew " Ben " Cor-
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH 305 
 
 vet and who, on hearing he was on the ferry, had come 
 in to learn what more was known; the business men 
 and clubmen, friends of Corvet's later life, had not 
 heard it yet. There was a restrained, professional at- 
 tentiveness among these seamen, as of those in the pres- 
 ence of an event which any day might happen to them- 
 selves. They were listening to the clerk who had com- 
 piled the report, who was telephoning now, and Con- 
 stance, waiting, listened too to learn what he might be 
 hearing. But he put down the receiver as he saw her. 
 
 " Nothing more, Miss Sherrill," he reported. " The 
 Richardson has wirelessed that she reached the re- 
 ported position of the sinking about half-past six 
 o'clock. She is searching but has found nothing." 
 
 " She's keeping on searching, though? " 
 
 "Yes; of course." 
 
 " It's still snowing there? " 
 
 " Yes, Miss Sherrill. We've had a message from 
 your father. He has gone on to Manistique ; it's more 
 likely that wreckage or survivors will be brought in 
 there." 
 
 The telephone switchboard beside Constance sud- 
 denly buzzed, and the operator, plugging in a connec- 
 tion, said: " Yes, sir; at once," and through the par- 
 titions of the private office on the other side, a man's 
 heavy tones came to Constance. That was Henry's 
 office and, in timbre, the voice was his, but it was so 
 strange in other characteristics of expression that she 
 waited an instant before saying to the clerk, 
 
 " Mr. Spearman has come in? " 
 
 The clerk hesitated, but the continuance of the tone 
 from the other side of the partition made reply super- 
 fluous. Yes, Mi 8S Sherrill."
 
 306 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " Did you tell him that mother and I were here? " 
 
 The clerk considered again before deciding to reply 
 in the affirmative. There evidently was some trouble 
 with the telephone number which Henry had called; 
 the girl at the switchboard was apologizing in fright- 
 ened panic, and Henry's voice, loud and abusive, 
 came more plainly through the partition. Constance 
 started to give an instruction to the clerk ; then, as 
 the abuse burst out again, she changed her plan and 
 went to Henry's door and rapped. Whether no one 
 else rapped in that way or whether he realized that 
 she might have come into the general office, she did not 
 know ; but at once his voice was still. He made no an- 
 swer and no move to open the door; so, after waiting 
 a moment, she turned the knob and went in. 
 
 Henry was seated at his desk, facing her, his big 
 hands before him; one of them held the telephone re- 
 ceiver. He lifted it slowly and put it upon the hook 
 beside the transmitter as he watched her with steady, 
 silent, aggressive scrutiny. His face was flushed a 
 little not much ; his hair was carefully brushed, and 
 there was something about his clean-shaven appearance 
 and the set of his perfectly fitting coat, one which he 
 did not ordinarily wear to business, which seemed stud- 
 ied. He did not rise; only after a moment he recol- 
 lected that he had not done so and came to his feet. 
 " Good morning, Connie," he said. " Come in. 
 What's the news?" 
 
 There was something strained and almost menacing 
 in his voice and in his manner which halted her. She 
 in some way or her presence at that moment ap- 
 peared to be definitely disturbing him. It frightened 
 him, she would have thought, except that the idea was
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH 307 
 
 a contradiction. Henry frightened? But if he was 
 not, what emotion now controlled him? 
 
 The impulse which had brought her into his office 
 went from her. She had not seen nor heard from 
 Henry directly since before Alan's telegram had come 
 late yesterday afternoon ; she had heard from her 
 father only that he had informed Henry; that was all. 
 
 "I've no news, Henryj" she said. " Have you?" 
 She closed the door behind her before moving closer to 
 him. She had not known what he had been doing, since 
 he had heard of Alan's telegram ; but she had supposed 
 that he was in some way cooperating with her father, 
 particularly since word had come of the disaster to the 
 ferry. 
 
 " How did you happen to be here, Connie? " he 
 asked. 
 
 She made no reply but gazed at him, studying him. 
 The agitation which he was trying to conceal was not 
 entirely consequent to her coming in upon him ; it had 
 been ruling him before. It had underlain the loudness 
 and abuse of his words which she had overheard. That 
 was no capricious outburst of temper or irritation; it 
 had come from something which had seized and held 
 him in suspense, in dread in dread; there was no 
 other way to define her impression to herself. When 
 she had opened the door and come in, he had looked up 
 in dread, as though preparing himself for whatever she 
 might announce. Now that the door shut them in 
 alone, he approached her with arms offered. She 
 stepped back, instinctively avoiding his embrace; and 
 he stopped at once, but he had come quite close to her 
 now. 
 
 That she had detected faintly the smell of liquor
 
 308 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 about him was not the whole reason for her drawing 
 back. He was not drunk; he was quite himself so far 
 as any influence of that kind was concerned. Long 
 ago, when he was a young man on the boats, he had 
 drunk a. good deal ; he had confessed to her once ; but 
 he had not done so for years. Since she had known 
 him, he had been among the most careful of her friends ; 
 it was for " efficiency " he had said. The drink was 
 simply a part indeed, only a small part of the 
 subtle strangeness and peculiarity she marked in him. 
 If he had been drinking now, it was, she knew, no 
 temptation, no capricious return to an old appetite. 
 If not appetite, then it was for the effect to brace 
 himself. Against what? Against the thing for which 
 he had prepared himself when she came upon him? 
 
 As she stared at him, the clerk's voice came to her 
 suddenly over the partition which separated the office 
 from the larger room where the clerk was receiving 
 some message over the telephone. Henry straightened, 
 listened; as the voice stopped, his great, finely shaped 
 head sank between his shoulders ; he fumbled in his 
 pocket for a cigar, and his big hands shook as he 
 lighted it, without word of excuse to her. A strange 
 feeling came to her that he felt what he dreaded ap- 
 proaching and was no longer conscious of her pres- 
 ence. 
 
 She heard footsteps in the larger room coming to^ 
 ward the office door. Henry was in suspense. A rap 
 came at the door. He whitened and took the cigar 
 from his mouth and wet his lips. 
 
 " Come in," he summoned. 
 
 One of the office girls entered, bringing a white page 
 of paper with three or four lines of purple typewriting
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH 309 
 
 upon it which Constance recognized must be a tran- 
 script of a message just received. 
 
 She started forward at sight of it, forgetting every- 
 thing else ; but he took the paper as though he did not 
 know she was there. He merely held it until the girl 
 had gone out ; even then he stood folding and unfold- 
 ing it, and his eyes did not drop to the sheet. 
 
 The girl had said nothing at all but, having seen 
 her, Constance was athrill ; the girl had not been a 
 bearer of bad news, that was sure; she brought some 
 sort of good news ! Constance, certain of it, moved 
 nearer to Henry to read what he held. He looked 
 down and read. 
 
 "What is it, Henry?" 
 
 His muscular reaction, as he read, had drawn the 
 sheet away from her; he recovered himself almost in- 
 stantly and gave the paper to her ; but, in that instant, 
 Constance herself was " prepared." She must have de- 
 ceived herself the instant before ! This bulletin must 
 be something dismaying to what had remained of 
 hope. 
 
 "8:35 A.M., Manitowoc, Wis.," she read. "The 
 schooner Anna S. Solwerk has been sighted making for 
 this port. She is oiot close enough for communication, 
 but two lifeboats, additional to her own, can be plainly 
 made out. It is believed that she must have' picked 
 up survivors of No. 25. She carries no wireless, so is 
 unable to report. Tugs are going out to her." 
 
 "Two lifeboats!" Constance cried. "That could 
 mean that they all are saved or nearly all ; doesn't it, 
 Henry; doesn't it?" 
 
 He had read some other significance in it, she 
 thought, or, from his greater understanding of con-
 
 310 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 ditions in the storm, he had been able to hold no hope 
 from what had been reported. That was the only way 
 she could explain to herself as he replied to her ; that 
 the word meant to him that men were saved and that 
 therefore it was dismaying to him, could not come to 
 her at once. When it came now, it went over her first 
 only in the flash of incredulous question. 
 
 " Yes," he said to her. " Yes." And he went out 
 of the room to the outer office. She turned and 
 watched him and then followed to the door. He had 
 gone to the desk of the girl who had brought him the 
 bulletin, and Constance heard his voice, strained and 
 queerly unnatural. " Call Manitowoc on the long dis- 
 tance. Get the harbor master. Get the names of 
 the people that the Solwerk picked up." 
 
 He stayed beside the girl while she started the call. 
 " Put them on my wire when you get them," he com- 
 manded and turned back to his office. " Keep my wire 
 clear for that." 
 
 Constance retreated into the room as he approached. 
 He did not want her there now, she knew ; for that 
 reason if she yet definitely understood no other 
 she meant to remain. If he asked her to go, she in- 
 tended to stay; but he did not ask her. He wished 
 her to go away; in every word which he spoke to her, 
 in every moment of their silent waiting, was his de- 
 sire to escape her ; but he dared not dared not 
 go about that directly. 
 
 The feeling of that flashed over her to her stupefac- 
 tion. Henry and she were waiting for word of the 
 fate of Uncle Benny and Alan, and waiting opposed! 
 She was no longer doubting it as she watched him; 
 she was trying to understand. The telephone buzzer
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH 311 
 
 under his desk sounded; she drew close as he took up 
 his receiver. 
 
 " Manitowoc? " he said. "I want to know what 
 you've heard from the Solwerk. . . . You hear me? 
 . . . The men the Solwerk picked up. You have the 
 names jet? " 
 
 5J 
 
 " The Benton? " 
 
 <( 5 
 
 " Oh, I understand ! All from the Benton. I see ! 
 . . . No; never mind their names. How about Num- 
 ber 25? Nothing more heard from them? " 
 
 Constance had caught his shoulder while he was 
 speaking and now clung to it. Release release of 
 strain was going through him ; she could feel it, and 
 she heard it in his tones and saw it in his eyes. 
 
 " The steamer Number 25 rammed proves to have 
 been the Benton," he told her. " The men are all from 
 her. They had abandoned her in the small boats, and 
 the Solrcerk picked them up before the ferry found 
 Vr." 
 
 He was not asking her to congratulate him upon the 
 relief he felt; he had not so far forgotten himself as 
 that. But it was plain to her that he was congratu- 
 lating himself; it had been fear that he was feeling 
 before fear, she was beginning to understand, that 
 those on the ferry had been saved. She shrank a little 
 away from him. Benjamin Corvet had not been a 
 friend of Henry 's they had quarreled ; Uncle Benny 
 had caused trouble ; but nothing which she had under- 
 stood could explain fear on Henry's part lest Uncle 
 Benny should be found safe. Henry had not welcomed 
 Alan ; but now Henry was hoping that Alan was dead.
 
 312 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 Henry's words to her in the north, after Alan had 
 seen her there, iterated themselves to her : " I told 
 that fellow Conrad not to keep stirring up these mat- 
 ters about Ben Corvet. . . . Conrad doesn't know 
 what he'll turn up ; I don't know either. But it's not 
 going to be anything pleasant. . . ." Only a few 
 minutes ago she had still thought of these words as 
 spoken only for Alan's sake and for Uncle Benny's ; 
 now she could not think of them so. This fear of 
 news from the north could not be for their sake ; it was 
 for Henry's own. Had all the warnings been for 
 Henry's sake too? 
 
 Horror and amazement flowed in upon her with her 
 realization of this in the man she had promised to 
 marry ; and he seemed now to appreciate the effect he 
 was producing upon her. He tried obviously to pull 
 himself together; he could not do that fully; yet he 
 managed a manner assertive of his right over her. 
 
 " Connie," he cried to her, " Connie! " 
 
 She drew back from him as he approached her; she 
 was not yet consciously denying his right. What was 
 controlling him, what might underlie his hope that 
 they were dead, she could not guess ; she could not 
 think or reason about that now; what she felt was 
 only overwhelming desire to be away from him where 
 she could think connectedly. For an instant she 
 stared at him, all her body tense; then, as she turned 
 and went out, he followed her, again calling her name. 
 But, seeing the seamen in the larger office, he stopped, 
 and she understood he was not willing to urge himself 
 upon her in their presence. 
 
 She crossed the office swiftly; in the corridor she 
 stopped to compose herself before she met her mother.
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH 813 
 
 She heard Henry's voice speaking to one of the clerks, 
 and flushed hotly with horror. Could she be certain 
 of anything about him now? Could she be certain 
 even that news which came through these employees 
 of his would not be kept from her or only so much 
 given her as would serve Henry's purpose and enable 
 him to conceal from her the reason for his fear? She 
 pushed the door open. 
 
 " I'm willing to go home now, mother, if you wish," 
 she said steadily. 
 
 Her mother arose at once. " There is no more news, 
 Constance?" 
 
 " No ; a schooner has picked up the crew of the ship 
 the ferry rammed ; that is all." 
 
 She followed her mother, but stopped in the ante- 
 room beside the desk of her father's private secretary. 
 
 " You are going to be here all day, Miss Bennet? ' 
 she asked. 
 
 " Yes, Miss Sherrill." 
 
 " Will you please try to see personally all messages 
 which come to Corvet, Sherrill and Spearman, or to 
 Mr. Spearman about the men "from Number 25, and 
 telephone them to me yourself?" 
 
 " Certainly, Miss Sherrill." 
 
 When they had gone down to the street and were in 
 the car, Constance leaned back, closing her eyes; she 
 feared her mother might wish to talk with her. The 
 afternoon papers were already out with news of the 
 loss of the ferry ; Mrs. Sherrill stopped the car and 
 bought one, but Constance looked at it only enough to 
 make sure that the reporters had been able to discover 
 nothing more than she already knew; the newspaper 
 reference to Henry was only as to the partner of the
 
 314 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 great Chicago ship owner, Benjamin Corvet, who might 
 be lost with the ship. 
 
 She called Miss Bennet as soon as she reached Lome ; 
 but nothing more had been received. Toward three 
 o'clock, Miss Bennet called her, but only to report that 
 the office had heard again from Mr. Sherrill. He had 
 wired .that he was going on from Manistique and would 
 cross the Straits from St. Ignace; messages from him 
 were to be addressed to Petoskey. He had given no 
 suggestion that he had news ; and there was no other 
 report except that vessels were still continuing the 
 search for survivors, because the Indian Drum, which 
 had been beating, was beating " short," causing the 
 superstitious to be certain that, though some of the 
 men from Number 25 were lost, some yet survived. 
 
 Constance thrilled as she heard that. She did not 
 believe in the Drum ; at least she had never thought she 
 had really believed in it; she had only stirred to the 
 idea of its being true. But if the Drum was beating, 
 she was glad it was beating short. It was serving, at 
 least, to keep the lake men more alert. She wondered 
 what part the report of the Drum might have played 
 in her father's movements. None, probably ; for he, 
 of course, did not believe in the Drum. His move was 
 plainly dictated by the fact that, with the western gale, 
 drift from the ferry would be toward the eastern shore. 
 
 A little later, as Constance stood at the window, 
 gazing out at the snow upon the lake, she drew back 
 suddenly out of sight from the street, as she saw 
 Henry's roadster appear out of the storm and stop 
 before the house. 
 
 She had been apprehensively certain that he would 
 come to her some time during the day ; he had been too
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH 315 
 
 fully aware of the effect he made upon her not to at- 
 tempt to remove that effect as soon as he could. As 
 he got out of the car, shaking the snowflakes from his 
 great fur coat and from his cap, looking up at the 
 house before he came in and not knowing that he was 
 observed, she saw something very like triumph in his 
 manner. Her pulses stopped, then raced, at that; tri- 
 umph for him! That meant, if he brought news, it 
 was good news for him ; it must be then, bad news for 
 her. 
 
 She waited in the room where she was. She heard 
 him in the hall, taking off his coat and speaking to the 
 servant, and he appeared then at the door. The strain 
 he was under had not lessened, she could see ; or rather, 
 if she could trust her feeling at sight of him, it had 
 lessened only slightly, and at the same time his power 
 to resist it had been lessening too. His hands and 
 even his body shook ; but his head was thrust forward, 
 and he stared at her aggressively, nnd, plainly, he had 
 determined in advance to act toward her as though 
 their relationship had not been disturbed. 
 
 " I thought you'd want to know, Connie," he said, 
 ; ' so I came straight out. The Richardson's picked up 
 one of the boats from the ferry." 
 
 " Uncle Benny and Alan Conrad were not in it," she 
 returned ; the triumph she had seen in him had told her 
 that. 
 
 " No ; it was the first boat put off by the ferry, with 
 the passengers and cabin maid and some injured men 
 of the crew." 
 
 " Were they alive ? " her voice hushed tensely. 
 
 " Yes ; that is, they were able to revive them all ; but 
 it didn't seem possible to the Richardson's officers that
 
 316 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 any one could be revived who had been exposed much 
 longer than that; so the Richardson's given up the 
 search, and some of the other ships that were search- 
 ing have given up too, and gone on their course." 
 
 "When did you hear that, Henry? I was just 
 speaking with the office." 
 
 " A few minutes ago ; a news wire got it before any 
 one else ; it didn't come through the office." 
 
 " I see; how many were in the boat? " 
 
 " Twelve, Connie." 
 
 " Then all the vessels up there won't give up yet ! " 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "I was just talking with Miss Bennet, Henry; she's 
 heard again from the other end of the lake. The peo- 
 ple up there say the Drum is beating, but it's beating 
 short still!" 
 
 "Short!" 
 
 She saw Henry stiffen. "Yes," she said swiftly. 
 " They say the Drum began sounding last night, and 
 that at first it sounded for only two lives; it's kept on 
 beating, but still is beating only for four. There were 
 thirty-nine on the ferry seven passengers and thirty- 
 two crew. Twelve have been saved now; so until the 
 Drum raises the beats to twenty-seven there is still a 
 chance that some one will be saved." 
 
 Henry made no answer ; his hands fumbled purpose- 
 lessly with the lapels of his coat, and his bloodshot 
 eyes wandered uncertainly. Constance watched him 
 with wonder at the effect of what she had told. When 
 she had asked him once about the Drum, he had pro- 
 fessed the same scepticism which she had; but he had 
 not held it; at least he was not holding it now. The 
 news of the Drum had shaken him from his triumph
 
 MR. SPEARMAN GOES NORTH 317 
 
 over Alan and Uncle Benny and over her. It had 
 shaken him so that, though he remained with her some 
 minutes more, he seemed to have forgotten the purpose 
 of reconciliation with her which had brought him to the 
 house. When a telephone call took her out of the 
 room, she returned to find him gone to the dining-room ; 
 she heard a decanter clink there against a glass. He 
 did not return to her again, but she heard him go. The 
 entrance door closed after him, and the sound of his 
 starting motor came. Then alarm, stronger even than 
 that she had felt during the morning, rushed upon her. 
 
 She dined, or made a pretence of dining, with her 
 mother at seven. Her mother's voice went on and on 
 about trifles, and Constance did not try to pay atten- 
 tion. Her thought was following Henry with ever 
 sharpening apprehension. She called the office in mid- 
 evening; it would be open, she knew, for messages re- 
 garding Uncle Benny and Alan would be expected 
 there. A clerk answered; no other news had been re- 
 ceived; she then asked Henry's whereabouts. 
 
 " Mr. Spearman went north late this afternoon, Miss 
 Sherrill," the clerk informed her. 
 
 "North? Where?" 
 
 " We are to communicate with him this evening to 
 Grand Rapids ; after that, to Petoskey." 
 
 Constance could hear her own heart beat. Why 
 had Henry gone, she wondered; not, certainly, to aid 
 the search. Had he gone to hinder it?
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH 
 
 CONSTANCE went up to her own rooms; she 
 could hear her mother speaking, in a room on 
 the same floor, to one of the maids ; but for her 
 present anxiety, her mother offered no help and could 
 not even be consulted. Nor could any message she 
 might send to her father explain the situation to him. 
 She was throbbing with determination and action, as 
 she found her purse and counted the money in it. She 
 never in her life had gone alone upon an extended 
 journey, much less been alone upon a train over night. 
 If she spoke of such a thing now, she would be pre- 
 vented; no occasion for it would be recognized; she 
 would not be allowed to go, even if " properly accom- 
 panied." She could not, therefore, risk taking a hand- 
 bag from the house ; so she thrust nightdress and toilet 
 articles into her muff and the roomy pocket of her fur 
 coat. She descended to the side door of the house and, 
 unobserved, let herself out noiselessly on to the carriage 
 drive. She gained the street and turned westward at 
 the first corner to a street car which would take her 
 to the railway station. 
 
 There was a train to the north every evening ; it was 
 not, she knew, such a train as ran in the resort season, 
 and she was not certain of the exact time of its de-
 
 THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH 319 
 
 parture ; but she would be in time for it. The manner 
 of buying a railway ticket and of engaging a berth 
 were unknown to her there had been servants always 
 to do these things but she watched others and did as 
 they did. On the train, the berths had been made up ; 
 people were going to bed behind some of the curtains. 
 She procured a telegraph blank and wrote a message 
 to her mother, telling her that she had gone north to 
 join her father. When the train had started, she gave 
 the message to the porter, directing him to send it from 
 the first large town at which they stopped. 
 
 She left the light burning in its little niche at the 
 head of the berth; she had no expectation that she 
 could sleep ; shut in by the green curtains, she drew 
 the covers up about her and stared upward at the pan- 
 eled face of the berth overhead. Then new frightened 
 distrust of the man she had been about to marry flowed 
 in upon her and became all her thought. 
 
 She had not promised Uncle Benny that she would 
 not marry Henry ; her promise had been that she would 
 not engage herself to that marriage until she had seen 
 Uncle Benny again. Uncle Benny's own act his 
 disappearance had prevented her from seeing him; 
 for that reason she had broken her promise; and, from 
 its breaking, something terrifying, threatening to her- 
 self had come. She had been amazed at what she 
 had seen in Henry ; but she was appreciating now that, 
 strangely, in her thought of him there was no sense of 
 loss to herself. Her feeling of loss, of something gone 
 from her which could not be replaced, was for Alan. 
 She had had admiration for Henry, pride in him; had 
 she mistaken what was merely admiration for love? 
 She had been about to marry him; had it been
 
 320 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 only his difference from the other men she knew that 
 had made her do that? Unconsciously to herself, had 
 she been growing to love Alan? 
 
 Constance could not, as yet, place Henry's part in 
 the strange circumstances which had begun to reveal 
 themselves with Alan's coming to Chicago ; but Henry's 
 hope that Uucle Benny and Alan were dead was begin- 
 ning to makg that clearer. She lay without voluntary 
 movement in her berth, but her bosom was shaking with 
 the thoughts which came to her. 
 
 Twenty years before, some dreadful event had altered 
 Uncle Benny's life; his wife had known or had 
 learned enough of that event so that she had left 
 him. It had seemed to Constance and her father, there- 
 fore, that it must have been some intimate and private 
 event. They had been confirmed in believing this, when 
 Uncle Benny, in madness or in fear, had gone away, 
 leaving everything he possessed to Alan Conrad. But 
 Alan's probable relationship to Uncle Benny had not 
 been explanation; she saw now that it had even been 
 misleading. For a purely private event in Uncle 
 Benny's life even terrible scandal could not make 
 Henry fear, could not bring terror of consequences to 
 himself. That could be only if Henry was involved in 
 some peculiar and intimate way with what had hap- 
 pened to Uncle Benny. If he feared Uncle Benny's 
 being found alive and feared Alan's being found alive 
 too, now that Alan had discovered Uncle Benny, it was 
 because he dreaded explanation of his own connection 
 with what had taken place. 
 
 Constance raised her window shade slightly and 
 looked out. It was still snowing; the train was run- 
 ning swiftly among low sand hills, snow-covered, and
 
 THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH 321 
 
 only dimly visible through snow and dark. A deep- 
 toned, steady roar came to her above the noises of the 
 train. The lake! Out there, Alan and Uncle Benny 
 were fighting, still struggling perhaps, against bitter 
 cold and ice and rushing water for their lives. She 
 must not think of that ! 
 
 Uncle Benny had withdrawn himself from men; he 
 had ceased to be active in his business and delegated it 
 to others. This change had been strangely advantage- 
 ous to Henry. Henry had been hardly more than a 
 common seaman then. He had been a mate the mate 
 on one of Uncle Benny's ships. Quite suddenly he had 
 become Uncle Benny's partner. Henry had explained 
 this to her by saying that Uncle Benny had felt mad- 
 ness coming on him and had selected him as the one to 
 take charge. But Uncle Benny had not trusted Henry ; 
 he had been suspicious of him; he had quarreled with 
 him. How strange, then, that Uncle Benny should 
 have advanced and given way to a man whom he could 
 not trust! 
 
 It was strange, too, that if as Henry had said 
 their quarrels had been about the business, Uncle 
 Benny had allowed Henry to remain in control. 
 
 Their quarrels had culminated on the day that Uncle 
 Benny went away. Afterward Uncle Benny had come 
 to her and warned her not to marry Henry ; then he had 
 sent for Alan. There had been purpose in these acts 
 of Uncle Benny's ; had they meant that Uncle Benny 
 had been on the verge of making explanation that 
 explanation which Henry feared and that he had 
 been prevented? Her father had thought this; at 
 least, he had thought that Uncle Benny must have left 
 some explanation in his house. He had told Alan that,
 
 322 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 and had given Alan the key to the house so that he 
 could find it. Alan had gone to the house 
 
 In the house Alan had found some one who had mis- 
 taken him for a ghost, a man who had cried out at 
 sight of him something about a ship about the 
 Miwaka, the ship of whose loss no one had known any- 
 thing except by the sounding of the Drum. What had 
 the man been doing in the house? Had he too been 
 looking for the explanation the explanation that 
 Henry feared? Alan had described the man to her; 
 that description had not had meaning for her before ; 
 but now remembering that description she could think 
 of Henry as the only one who could have been in that 
 house! Henry had fought with Alan there! After- 
 wards, when Alan had been attacked upon the street, 
 had Henry anything to do with that? 
 
 Henry had lied to her about being in Duluth the 
 night he had fought with Alan ; he had not told her the 
 true cause of his quarrels with Uncle Benny ; he had 
 wished her to believe that Uncle Benny was dead when 
 the wedding ring and watch came to her the watch 
 which had been Captain Stafford's of the Mizeaka! 
 Henry had urged her to marry him at once. Was that 
 because he wished the security that her father 
 and she must give her husband when they learned 
 the revelation which Alan or Uncle Benny might 
 bring? 
 
 If so, then that revelation had to do with the 
 Miwaka. It was of the M'vwaka that Henry had cried 
 out to Alan in the house ; they were the names of the 
 next of kin of those on the Miwaka that Uncle Benny 
 had kept. That was beginning to explain to her some- 
 thing of the effect on Henry of the report that the
 
 THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH 323 
 
 Drum was telling that some on Ferry Number 25 were 
 alive, and why he had hurried north because of that. 
 The Drum so superstition had said had beat the 
 roll of those who died with the Miwaka; hadi beaten for 
 all but one ! No one of those who accepted the super- 
 stition had ever been able to explain that; but Henry 
 could! He knew something more about the Miwaka 
 than others knew. He had encountered the Miwaka 
 somehow or encountered some one saved from the Mi- 
 waka; he knew, then, that the Drum had beaten cor- 
 rectly for the Miwaka, that one was spared as the 
 Drum had told! Who had that one been? Alan? 
 And was he now among those for whom the Drum had 
 not yet beat? 
 
 She recalled that, on the day when the Miwaka was 
 lost, Henry and Uncle Benny had been upon the lake 
 in a tug. Afterwards Uncle Benny had grown rich; 
 Henry had attained advancement and wealth. Her 
 reasoning had brought her to the verge of a terrible dis- 
 covery. If she could take one more step forward in 
 her thought, it would make her understand it all. But 
 she could not yet take that step. 
 
 In the morning, at Traverse City where she got a 
 cup of coffee and some toast in the station eating house 
 she had to change to a day coach. It had grown 
 still more bitterly cold ; the wind which swept the long 
 brick-paved platform of the station was arctic; and 
 even through the double windows of the day coach she 
 could feel its chill. The points of Grand Traverse Bay 
 were frozen across ; frozen across too was Torch Lake ; 
 to north of that, ice, snow-covered, through which 
 frozen rushes protruded, marked the long chain of 
 little lakes known as the " Intermediates." The little
 
 324 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 towns and villages, and the rolling fields with their leaf- 
 less trees or blackened stumps, lay under drifts. It had 
 stopped snowing, however, and she found relief in that ; 
 searchers upon the lake could see small boats now 
 if there were still small boats to be seen. 
 
 To the people in her Pullman, the destruction of the 
 ferry had been only a news item competing for interest 
 with other news on the front pages of their newspapers ; 
 but to these people in the day coach, it was an intimate 
 and absorbing thing. They spoke by name of the crew 
 as of persons whom they knew. A white lifeboat, one 
 man told her, had been seen south of Beaver Island; 
 another said there had been two boats. They had 
 been far off from shore, but, according to the report 
 cabled from Beaver, there had appeared to be men in 
 them; the men her informant's voice hushed slightly 
 had not been rowing. Constance shuddered. She 
 had heard of things like that on the quick-freezing 
 fresh water of the lakes small boats adrift crowded 
 with men sitting upright in them, ice-coated, frozen, 
 lifeless! 
 
 Petoskey, with its great hotels closed and boarded up, 
 and its curio shops closed and locked, was blocked with 
 snow. She went from the train directly to the tele- 
 graph office. If Henry was in Petoskey, they would 
 know at that office where he could be found ; he would 
 be keeping in touch with them. The operator in charge 
 of the office knew her, and his manner became still more 
 deferential when she asked after Henry. 
 
 Mr. Spearman, the man said, had been at the office 
 early in the day ; there had been no messages for him ; 
 he had left instructions that any which came were to be 
 forwarded to him through the men who, under his direc-
 
 THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH 325 
 
 tion, were patroling the shore fof twenty miles north of 
 Little Traverse, watching for boats. The operator 
 added to the report she had heard upon the train. One 
 lifeboat and perhaps two had been seen by a farmer who 
 had been on the ice to the south of Beaver; the second 
 boat had been far to the south and west of the first one ; 
 tugs were cruising there now ; it had been many hours, 
 however, after the farmer had seen the boats before he 
 had been able to get word to the town at the north end 
 of the island St. James so that the news could 
 be cabled to the mainland. Fishermen and seamen, 
 therefore, regarded it as more likely, from the direc- 
 tion and violence of the gale, that the boats, if they con- 
 tinued to float, would be drifted upon the mainland than 
 that they would be found by the tugs. 
 
 Constance asked after her father. Mr. Sherrill and 
 Mr. Spearman, the operator told her, had been in com- 
 munication that morning; Mr. Sherrill had not come to 
 Petoskey ; he had taken charge of the watch along the 
 shore at its north end. It was possible that the boats 
 might drift in there ; but men of experience considered 
 it more probable that the boats would drift in farther 
 south where Mr. Spearman was in charge. 
 
 Constance cussed the frozen edges of the bay by 
 sledge to Harbor Point. The driver mentioned Henry 
 with admiration and with pride in his acquaintance 
 with him ; it brought vividly to her the recollection that 
 Henry's rise in life was a matter of personal congratu- 
 lation to these people as lending luster to the neighbor- 
 hood and to themselves. Henry's influence here was 
 far greater than her own or her father's; if she were 
 to move against Henry or show him distrust, she must 
 work alone; she could enlist no aid from these.
 
 326 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 And her distrust now had deepened to terrible dread. 
 She had not been able before this to form any definite 
 idea of how Henry could threaten Alan and Uncle 
 Benny ; she had imagined only vague interference and 
 obstruction of the search for them ; she had not foreseen 
 that he could so readily assume charge of the search 
 and direct, or misdirect, it. 
 
 At the Point she discharged the sledge and went on 
 foot to the house of the caretaker who had charge of 
 the Sherrill cottage during the winter. Getting the 
 keys from him, she let herself into the house. The elec- 
 tric light had been cut off, and the house was darkened 
 by shutters, but she found a lamp and lit it. Going to 
 her room, she unpacked a heavy sweater and woolen 
 cap and short fur coat winter things which were left 
 there against use when they opened the house some- 
 times out of season and put them on. Then she 
 went down and found her snowshoes. Stopping at the 
 telephone, she called long distance and asked them to 
 locate Mr. Sherrill, if possible, and instruct him to 
 move south along the shore with whomever he had with 
 him. She went out then, and fastened on her snow- 
 shoes. 
 
 It had grown late. The early December dusk - the 
 second dusk since little boats had put off from Number 
 25 darkened the snow-locked land. The wind from 
 the west cut like a knife, even through her fur coat. 
 The pine trees moaned and bent, with loud whistlings 
 of the wind among their needles ; the leafless elms and 
 maples crashed their limbs together ; above the clamor 
 of all other sounds, the roaring of the lake came to 
 her, the booming of the waves against the ice, the shat- 
 ter of floe on floe. No snow had fallen for a few hours,
 
 THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH 327 
 
 and the sky was even clearing; ragged clouds scurried 
 before the wind and, opening, showed the moon. 
 
 Constance hurried westward and then north, follow- 
 ing the bend of the shore. The figure of a man 
 one of the shore patrols pacing the ice hummocks of 
 the beach and staring out upon the lake, appeared 
 vaguely in the dusk when she had gone about two miles. 
 He seemed surprised at seeing a girl, but less surprised 
 when he had recognized her. Mr. Spearman, he told 
 her, was to the north of them upon the beach somewhere, 
 he did not know how far; he could not leave his post 
 to accompany her, but he assured her that there were 
 men stationed all along the shore. She came, indeed, 
 three quarters of a mile farther on, to a second man; 
 about an equal distance beyond, she found a third, but 
 passed him and went on. 
 
 Her legs ached now with the unaccustomed travel 
 upon snowshoes ; the cold, which had been only a pierc- 
 ing chill at first, was stopping feeling, almost stopping 
 thought. When clouds covered the moon, complete 
 darkness came; she could go forward only slowly then 
 or must stop and wait ; but the intervals of moonlight 
 were growing longer and increasing in frequency. As 
 the sky cleared, she went forward quickly for many 
 minutes at a time, straining her gaze westward over the 
 tumbling water and the floes. It came to her with 
 terrifying apprehension that she must have advanced 
 at least three miles since she had seen the last patrol ; 
 she could not have passed any one in the moonlight 
 without seeing him, and in the dark intervals she had 
 advanced so little that she could not have missed one 
 that way either. 
 
 She tried to go faster as she realized this ; but now
 
 328 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 travel had become more difficult. There was no longer 
 any beach. High, precipitous bluffs, which she recog- 
 nized as marking Seven Mile Point, descended here di- 
 rectly to the hummocked ice along the water's edge. 
 She fell many times, graveling upon these hummocks ; 
 there were strange, treacherous places between the 
 hummocks where, except for her snowshoes, she would 
 have broken through. Her skirt was torn ; she lost one 
 of her gloves and could not stop to look for it ; she fell 
 again and sharp ice cut her ungloved hand and blood 
 froze upon her finger tips. She did not heed any of 
 these things. 
 
 She was horrified to find that she was growing weak, 
 and that her senses were becoming confused. She mis- 
 took at times floating ice, metallic under the moonlight, 
 for boats ; her heart beat fast then while she scrambled 
 part way up the bluff to gain better sight and so ascer- 
 tained her mistake. Deep ravines at places broke the 
 shores; following the bend of the bluffs, she got into 
 these ravines and only learned her error when she found 
 that she was departing from the shore. She had come, 
 in all, perhaps eight miles ; and she was " playing out " ; 
 other girls, she assured herself other girls would not 
 have weakened like this ; they would have had strength 
 to make certain no boats were there, or at least to get 
 help. She had seen no houses; those, she knew, stood 
 back from the shore, high upon the bluffs, and were not 
 easy to find; but she scaled the bluff now and looked 
 about for lights. The country was wild and wooded, 
 and the moonlight showed only the white stretches of 
 the shrouding snow. 
 
 She descended to the beach again and went on ; her 
 gaze continued to search the lake, but now, wherever
 
 THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH 329 
 
 there was a break in the bluffs, she looked toward the 
 shore as well. At the third of these breaks, the yellow 
 glow of a window appeared, marking a house in a hollow 
 between snow-shrouded hills. She turned eagerly that 
 way ; she could go only very slowly now. There was 
 no path; at least, if there was, the snow drifts hid it. 
 Through the drifts a thicket projected ; the pines on the 
 ravine sides overhead stood so close that only a silver 
 tracery of the moonlight came through; beyond the 
 pines, birch trees, stripped of their bark, stood black 
 up to the white boughs. 
 
 Constance climbed over leafless briars and through 
 brush and came upon a clearing perhaps fifty yards 
 across, roughly crescent shaped, as it followed the con- 
 figuration of the hills. Dead cornstalks, above the 
 snow, showed ploughed ground; beyond that, a little, 
 black cabin huddled in the further point of the cres- 
 cent, and Constance gasped with disappointment as she 
 saw it. She had expected a farmhouse ; but this plainly 
 was not even that. The framework was of logs or poles 
 which had been partly boarded over; and above the 
 boards and where they were lacking, black building 
 paper had been nailed, secured by big tin discs. The 
 rude, weather-beaten door was closed; smoke, however, 
 came from a pipe stuck through the roof t 
 
 She struggled to the door and knocked upon it, and 
 receiving no reply, she beat upon it with both fists. 
 
 "Who's here?" she cried. "Who's here?" 
 
 The door opened then a very little, and the fright- 
 ened face of an Indian woman appeared in the crack. 
 The woman evidently had expected and feared 
 some arrival, and was reassured when she saw only a 
 girl. She threw the door wider open, and bent to help
 
 330 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 unfasten Constance's snowshoes ; having done that, she 
 led her in and closed the door. 
 
 Constance looked swiftly around the single room of 
 the cabin. There was a cot on one side ; there was a 
 table, home carpentered; there were a couple of boxes 
 for clothing or utensils. The stove, a good range once 
 in the house of a prosperous farmer, had been bricked 
 up by its present owners so as to hold fire. Dried 
 onions and yellow ears of corn hung from the rafters; 
 on the shelves were little birchbark canoes, woven 
 baskets, and porcupine quill boxes of the ordinary sort 
 made for the summer trade. Constance recognized the 
 woman now as one who had come sometimes to the Point 
 to sell such things, and who could speak fairly good 
 English. The woman clearly had recognized Con- 
 stance at once. 
 
 " Where is your man? " Constance had caught the 
 woman's arm. 
 
 " They sent for him to the beach. A ship has sunk." 
 
 " Are there houses near here ? You must run to one 
 of them at once. Bring whoever you can get ; or if you 
 won't do that, tell me where to go." 
 
 The woman stared at her stolidly and moved away. 
 " None near," she said. " Besides, you could not get 
 somebody before some one will come." 
 
 "Who is that?" 
 
 " He is on the beach Henry Spearman. He comes 
 here to warm himself. It is nearly time he comes 
 again." 
 
 " How long has he been about here? " 
 
 " Since before noon. Sit down. I will make you 
 l^a." 
 
 Constance gazed at her ; the woman was plainly glad
 
 THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH 331 
 
 of her coming. Her relief relief from that fear she 
 had been feeling when she opened the door was very 
 evident. It was Henry, then, who had frightened her. 
 
 The Indian woman set a chair for her beside the 
 stove, and put water in a pan to heat; she shook tea 
 leaves from a box into a bowl and brought a cup. 
 
 " How many on that ship ? " 
 
 *' Altogether there were thirty-nine," Constance re- 
 plied. 
 
 "Some saved?" 
 
 " Yes ; a boat was picked up yesterday morning with 
 twelve." 
 
 The woman seemed making some computation which 
 was difficult for her. 
 
 " Seven are living then," she said. 
 
 " Seven? What have you heard? What makes you 
 think so?" 
 
 " That is what the Drum says." 
 
 The Drum! There was a Drum then! At least 
 there was some sound which people heard and which 
 they called the Drum. For the woman had heard it. 
 
 The woman shifted, checking something upon her fin- 
 gers, while her lips moved ; she was not counting, Con- 
 stance thought; she was more likely aiding herself in 
 translating something from Indian numeration into 
 English. " Two, it began with," she announced. 
 " Right away it went to nine. Sixteen then that 
 was this morning very early. Now, all day and to- 
 night, it has been giving twenty. That leaves seven. 
 It is not known who they may be." 
 
 She opened the door and looked out. The roar of 
 the water and the wind, which had come loudly, in- 
 creased, and with it the wood noises. The woman was
 
 332 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 not looking about now, Constance realized; she was 
 listening. Constance arose and went to the door too. 
 The Drum ! Blood prickled in her face and forehead ; 
 it prickled in her finger tips. The Drum was heard 
 only, it was said, in time of severest storm; for that 
 reason it was heard most often in winter. It was very 
 seldom heard by any one in summer; and she was of 
 the summer people. Sounds were coming from the 
 woods now. Were these reverberations the roll of the 
 Drum which beat for the dead? Her roice was uncon^ 
 trolled as she asked the woman : 
 "Is that the Drum?" 
 
 The woman shook her head. " That's the trees." 
 Constance's shoulders shook convulsively together. 
 When she had thought about the Drum and when 
 she had spoken of it with others who, themselves, never 
 had heard it they always had said that, if there were 
 such a sound, it was trees. She herself had heard those 
 strange wood noises, terrifying sometimes until their 
 source was known wailings like the cry of some one 
 in anguish, which were caused by two crossed saplings 
 rubbing together ; thunderings, which were only some 
 smaller trees beating against a great hollow trunk when 
 a strong wind veered from a certain direction. But 
 this Indian woman must know all such sounds well ; and 
 to her the Drum was something distinct from them. 
 The woman specified that now. 
 
 " You'll know the Drum when you hear it." 
 Constance grew suddenly cold. For twenty lives, 
 the woman said, the Drum had beat ; that meant to her, 
 and to Constance too now, that seven were left. Indefi- 
 nite, desperate denial that all from the ferry must be 
 dead that denial which had been strengthened by the
 
 THE WATCH UPON THE BEACH 333 
 
 ne"ws that at least one boat had been adrift near Beaver 
 
 altered in Constance to conviction of a boat with 
 seven men from the ferry, seven dying, perhaps, but 
 not yet dead. Seven out of twenty-seven ! The score 
 were gone ; the Drum had beat for them in little groups 
 as they had died. When the Drum beat again, would 
 it beat beyond the score? 
 
 The woman drew back and closed the door ; the water 
 was hot now, and she made the tea and poured a cup for 
 Constance. As she drank it, Constance was listening 
 for the Drum; the woman too was listening. Having 
 finished the tea, Constance returned to the door and 
 reopened it ; the sounds outside were the same. A sol- 
 itary figure appeared moving along the edge of the ice 
 
 the figure of a tall man, walking on snowshoes ; 
 moonlight distorted the figure, and it was muffled too in 
 a great coat which made it unrecognizable. He halted 
 and stood looking out at the lake and then, with a 
 sudden movement, strode on; he halted again, and now 
 Constance got the knowledge that he was not looking; 
 he was listening as she was. He was not merely listen- 
 ing; his body swayed and bent to a rhythm he was 
 counting something that he heard. Constance strained 
 her ears ; but she could hear no sound except those of 
 the waters and the wind. 
 
 " Is the Drum sounding now ? " she asked the woman. 
 
 No." 
 
 Constance gazed again at the man and found his 
 motion quite unmistakable; he was counting if not 
 counting something that he heard, or thought he heard, 
 he was recounting and reviewing within himself some- 
 thing that he had heard before some irregular 
 rhythm which had become so much a part of him that it
 
 334 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 sounded now continually within his own brain ; so that, 
 instinctively, he moved in cadence to it. He stepped 
 forward again now, and turned toward the house. 
 
 Her breath caught as she spoke to the woman. 
 " Mr. Spearman is coming here now ! " 
 
 Her impulse was to remain where she was, lest he 
 should think she was afraid of him ; but realization came 
 to her that there might be advantage in seeing him 
 before he knew that she was there, so she reclosed the 
 door and drew back into the cabin.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE DRUM 
 
 NOISES of the wind and the roaring of the lake 
 made inaudible any sound of his approach to 
 the cabin; she heard his snowshoes, however, 
 scrape the cabin wall as, after taking them off, he 
 leaned them beside the door. He thrust the door open 
 then and came in ; he did not see her at first and, as he 
 turned to force the door shut again against the wind, 
 she watched him quietly. She understood at once why 
 the Indian woman had been afraid of him. His face 
 was bloodless, yellow, and swollen-looking, his eyes 
 bloodshot, his lips strained to a thin, straight line. 
 
 He saw her now and started and, as though sight of 
 her confused him, he looked away from the woman and 
 then back to Constance before he seemed certain of her. 
 
 " Hello ! " he said tentatively. Hello ! " 
 
 " I'm here, Henry." 
 
 "Oh; you are! You are!" He stood drawn up, 
 swaying a little as he stared at her ; whiskey was upon 
 his breath, and it became evident in the heat of the 
 room ; but whiskey could not account for this con- 
 dition she witnessed in him. Neither could it conceal 
 that condition; some turmoil and strain within him 
 made him immune to its effects. 
 
 She had realized on her way up here what, vaguely, 
 that strain within him must be. Guilt guilt of some
 
 336 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 awful sort connected him, and had connected Uncle 
 Benny, with the Miwaka the lost ship for which the 
 Drum had beaten the roll of the dead. Now dread of 
 revelation of that guilt had brought him here near to 
 the Drum; he had been alone upon the beach twelve 
 hours, the woman had said listening, counting the 
 beating of the Drum for another ship, fearing the sur- 
 vival of some one from that ship. Guilt was in his 
 thought now racking, tearing at him. But there 
 was something more than that; what she had seen in 
 him when he first caught sight of her was fear fear 
 of her, of Constance Sherrill. 
 
 He was fully aware, she now understood, that he had 
 in a measure betrayed himself to her in Chicago ; and he 
 had hoped to cover up and to dissemble that betrayal 
 with her. For that reason she was the last person in 
 the world whom he wished to find here now. 
 
 " The point is," he said heavily, " why are you 
 here?" 
 
 " I decided to come up last night." 
 
 " Obviously." He uttered the word slowly and with 
 care. " Unless you came in a flying machine. Who 
 came with you? " 
 
 " No one ; I came alone. I expected to find father 
 at Petoskey ; he hadn't been there, so I came on here." 
 
 "After him?" 
 
 " No ; after you, Henry." 
 
 " After me ? " She had increased the apprehension 
 in him, and he considered and scrutinized her before he 
 ventured to go on. " Because you wanted to be up 
 here with me, eh, Connie? " 
 
 " Of course not ! " 
 
 "What's that?"
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE DRUM 337 
 
 " Of course not ! " 
 
 " I knew it ! " he moved menacingly. She watched 
 him quite without fear; fear was for him, she felt, not 
 her. Often she had wished that she might have known 
 him when he was a young man ; now, she was aware that, 
 in a way, she was having that wish. Under the surface 
 of the man whose strength and determination she had 
 admired, all the time had been this terror this guilt. 
 If Uncle Benny had carried it for a score of years, 
 Henry had had it within him too. This had been 
 within him all the time! 
 
 " You came up here about Ben Corvet ? " he chal- 
 lenged. 
 
 " Yes no ! " 
 
 "Which do you mean?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I know then. For him, then eh. For him ! " 
 
 " For Alan Conrad? Yes," she said. 
 
 " I knew it ! " he repeated. " He's been the trouble 
 between you and me all the time ! " 
 
 She made no denial of that; she had begun to know 
 during the last two days that it was so. 
 
 " So you came to find him ? " Henry went on. 
 
 " Yes, Henry. Have you any news ? " 
 
 "News?" 
 
 "News of the boats?" 
 
 " News ! " he iterated. " News to-night ! No one'll 
 have more'n one news to-night ! " 
 
 From his slow, heavy utterance, a timbre of terrible 
 satisfaction betrayed itself; his eyes widened a little 
 as he saw it strike Constance, then his lids narrowed 
 again. He had not meant to say it that way ; yet, for 
 an instant, satisfaction to him had become inseparable
 
 338 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 from the saying, before that was followed by fright 
 the fright of examination of just what he had said or 
 of what she had made of it. 
 
 "He'll be found!" she defied him. 
 
 " Be found? " 
 
 " Some are dead," she admitted, " but not all. 
 Twenty are dead ; but seven are not ! " 
 
 She looked for confirmation to the Indian woman, who 
 nodded: "Yes.." He moved his head to face the 
 woman, but his eyes, unmoving, remained fixed on Con- 
 stance. 
 
 *' Seven ? " he echoed. " You say seven are not ! 
 How do you know? " 
 
 " The Drum has been beating for twenty, but not 
 for more ! " Constance said. Thirty hours before, 
 when she had told Henry of the Drum, she had done it 
 without belief herself, without looking for belief in him. 
 But now, whether or not she yet believed or simply 
 clung to the superstition for its shred of hope, it gave 
 her a weapon to terrify him ; for he believed believed 
 with all the unreasoning horror of his superstition and 
 the terror of long-borne and hidden guilt. 
 
 " The Drum, Henry ! " she repeated. " The Drum 
 you've been listening to all day upon the beach the 
 Indian Drum that sounded for the dead of the M'vtcaka; 
 sounded, one by one, for all who died! But it didn't 
 sound for him! It's been sounding again, you know; 
 but, again, it doesn't sound for him, Henry, not for 
 him ! " 
 
 "The Miicaka! What do you mean by that? 
 What's that got to do with this ? " His swollen face 
 was thrust forward at her; there was threat against 
 her in his tense muscles and his bloodshot eyes.
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE DRUM 339 
 
 She did not shrink back from him, or move ; and now 
 he was not waiting for her answer. Something a 
 sound had caught him about. Once it echoed, low 
 in its reverberation but penetrating and quite distinct. 
 It came, so far as direction could be assigned to it, 
 from the trees toward the shore; but it was like no 
 forest sound. Distinct too was it from any noise of 
 the lake. It was like a Drum ! Yet, when the echo had 
 gone, it was a sensation easy to deny a hallucina- 
 tion, that was all. But now, low and distinct it came 
 again ; and, as before, Constance saw it catch Henry 
 and hold him. His lips moved, but he did not speak; 
 he was counting. " Two," she saw his lips form. 
 
 The Indian woman passed them and opened the door, 
 and now the sound, louder and more distinct, came 
 again. 
 
 " The Drum ! " she whispered, without looking about. 
 "You hear? Three, I've heard. Now four! It will 
 beat twenty ; then we will know if more are dead ! " 
 
 The door blew from the woman's hand, and snow, 
 swept up from the drifts of the slope, swirled into the 
 room ; the draft blew the flame of the lamp in a smoky 
 streak up the glass chimney and snuffed it out. The 
 moonlight painted a rectangle on the floor; the moon- 
 light gave a green, shimmering world without. Hur- 
 ried spots of cloud shuttered away the moon for mo- 
 ments, casting shadows which swept raggedly up the 
 slope from the shore. The woman seized the door and, 
 tugging it about against the gale, she slammed it shut. 
 She did not try at once to relight the lamp. 
 
 The sound of the Drum was continuing, the beats a 
 few seconds apart. The opening of the door outside 
 had seemed to Constance to make the beats come
 
 340 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 louder and more distinct ; but the closing of the door 
 did not muffle them again. " Twelve," Constance 
 counted to herself. The beats had seemed to be quite 
 measured and regular at first; but now Constance 
 knew that this was only roughly true ; they beat rather 
 in rhythm than at regular intervals. Two came close 
 together and there was a longer wait before the next ; 
 then three sounded before the measure a wild, leap- 
 ing rhythm. She recalled having heard that the 
 strangeness of Indian music to civilized ears was its 
 time ; the drums beat and rattles sounded in a different 
 time from the song which they accompanied ; there were 
 even, in some dances, three different times contending 
 for supremacy. Now this seemed reproduced in the 
 strange, irregular sounding of the Drum ; she could not 
 count with certainty those beats. " Twenty twenty- 
 one twenty-two!" Constance caught breath and 
 waited for the next beat; the time of the interval be- 
 tween the measures of the rh\-thm passed, and still only 
 the whistle of the wind and the undertone of water 
 sounded. The Drum had beaten its roll and, for the 
 moment, was done. 
 
 " Now it begins again," the woman whispered. " Al- 
 ways it waits and then it begins over." 
 
 Constance let go her breath; the next beat then 
 would not mean another death. Twenty-two, had been 
 her count, as nearly as she could count at all ; the reck- 
 oning agreed with what the woman had heard. Two 
 had died, then, since the Drum last had beat, when its 
 roll was twenty. Two more than before; that meant 
 five were left! Yet Constance, while she was appreci- 
 ating this, strained forward, staring at Henry; she 
 could not be certain, in the flickering shadows of the
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE DRUM 341 
 
 cabin, of what she was seeing in him; still less, in the 
 sudden stoppage of heart and breathing that it 
 brought, could she find coherent answer to its meaning. 
 But still it turned her weak, then spurred her with a 
 vague and terrible impulse. 
 
 The Indian woman lifted the lamp chimney waver- 
 ingly and scratched a match and, with unsteady hands, 
 lighted the wick ; Constance caught up her woolen hood 
 from the table and put it on. Her action seemed to call 
 Henry to himself. 
 
 " What are you going to do ? " he demanded. 
 
 " I'm going out." 
 
 He moved between her and the door. " Not alone, 
 you're not ! " His heavy voice had a deep tone of 
 menace in it ; he seemed to consider and decide some- 
 thing about her. " There's a farmhouse about a mile 
 back ; I'm going to take you over there and leave you 
 with those people." 
 
 " I will not go there ! " 
 
 He swore. " I'll carry you then ! " 
 
 She shrank back from him as he lurched toward her 
 with hands outstretched to seize her; he followed her, 
 and she avoided him again ; if his guilt and terror had 
 given her mental ascendency over him, his physical 
 strength could still force her to his will and, realizing 
 the impossibility of evading him or overcoming him, she 
 stopped. 
 
 " Not that ! " she cried. " Don't touch me ! " 
 
 " Come with me then ! " he commanded ; and he went 
 to the door and laid his snowshoes on the snow and 
 stepped into them, stooping and tightening the straps ; 
 he stood by while she put on hers. He did not attempt 
 again to put hands upon her as they moved away from
 
 342 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 the little cabin toward the woods back of the clearing; 
 but went ahead, breaking the trail for her with his 
 snowshoes. He moved forward slowly ; he could travel, 
 if he had wished, three feet to every two that she could 
 cover, but he seemed not wishing for speed but rather 
 for delay. They reached the trees ; the hemlock and 
 pine, black and swaying, shifted their shadows on the 
 moonlit snow; bare maples and beeches, bent by the 
 gale, creaked and cracked ; now the hemlock was heavier. 
 The wind, which wailed among the branches of the 
 maples, hissed loudly in the needles of the hemlocks ; 
 snow swept from the slopes and whirled and drove about 
 them, and she sucked it in with her breath. All 
 through the wood were noises; a moaning came from a 
 dark copse of pine and hemlock to their right, rose and 
 died away ; a wail followed a whining, whimpering 
 wail so like the crying of a child that it startled her. 
 Shadows seemed to detach themselves, as the trees 
 swayed, to tumble from the boughs and scurry over the 
 snow; they hid, as one looked at them, then darted on 
 and hid behind the tree trunks. 
 
 Henry was barely moving; now he slowed still more. 
 A deep, dull resonance was booming above the wood ; it 
 boomed again and ran into a rhythm. No longer was 
 it above ; at least it was not only above ; it was all about 
 them here, there, to right and to left, before, be- 
 hind the booming of the Drum. Doom was the sub- 
 stance of that sound of the Drum beating the roll of 
 the dead. Could there be abiding in the wood a con- 
 sciousness which counted that roll? Constance fought 
 the mad feeling that it brought. The sound must have 
 some natural cause, she repeated to herself waves 
 washing in some strange conformation of the ice caves
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE DRUM 343 
 
 on the shore, wind reverberating within some great hol- 
 low tree trunk as within the pipe of an organ. But 
 Henry was not denying the Drum ! 
 
 He had stopped in front of her, half turned her way ; 
 his body swayed and bent to the booming of the Drum, 
 as his swollen lips counted its soundings. She could 
 see him plainly in the moonlight, yet she drew nearer 
 to him as she followed his count. " Twenty-one," he 
 counted "Twenty-two!" The Drum was still go- 
 ing on. " Twenty-four twenty-five twenty-six ! " 
 Would he count another? 
 
 He did not ; and her pulses, which had halted, leaped 
 with relief ; and through her comprehension rushed. It 
 was thus she had seen him counting in the cabin, but so 
 vaguely that she had not been certain of it, but only 
 able to suspect. Then the Drum had stopped short of 
 twenty-six, but he had not stopped counting because of 
 that ; he had made the sounds twenty-six, when she and 
 the woman had made them, twenty-two; now he had 
 reckoned them twenty-six, though the Drum, as she 
 separated the sound from other noises, still went on! 
 
 He moved on again, descending the steep side of a 
 little ravine, and she followed. One of his snowshoes 
 caught in a protruding root and, instead of slowing to 
 free it with care, he pulled it violently out, and she 
 heard the dry, seasoned wood crack. He looked down, 
 swore ; saw that the wood was not broken through and 
 went on ; but as he reached the bottom of the slope, she 
 leaped downward from a little height behind him and 
 crashed down upon his trailing snowshoe just behind 
 the heel. The rending snap of the wood came beneath 
 her feet. Had she broken through his shoe or snapped 
 her own? She sprang back, as he cried out and swung
 
 344 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 in an attempt to grasp her; he lunged to follow her, 
 and she ran a few steps away and stopped. At his next 
 step, his foot entangled in the mesh of the broken snow- 
 shoe, and he stooped, cursing, to strip it off and hurl 
 it from him; then he tore off the one from the other 
 foot, and threw it away, and lurched after her again; 
 but now he sank above his knees and floundered in the 
 snow. She stood for a moment while the half-mad, 
 half-drunken figure struggled toward her along the side 
 of the ravine ; then she ran to where the tree trunks hid 
 her from him, but where she could look out from the 
 shadow and see him. He gained the top of the slope 
 and turned in the direction she had gone; assured 
 then, apparently, that she had fled in fear of him, he 
 started back more swiftly toward the beach. She fol- 
 lowed, keeping out of his sight among the trees. 
 
 To twenty-six, he had counted to twenty-six, each 
 time! That told that he knew one was living among 
 those who had been upon the ferry! The Drum it 
 was not easy to count with exactness those wild, irreg- 
 ularly leaping sounds; one might make of them almost 
 what one wished or feared ! And if, in his terror 
 here, Henry made the count twenty-six, it was because 
 he knew he knew that one was living! What one? 
 It could only be one of two to dismay him so ; there had 
 been only two on the ferry whose rescue he had feared ; 
 only two who, living, he would have let lie upon this 
 beach which he had chosen and set aside for his patrol, 
 while he waited for him to die! 
 
 She forced herself on, unsparingly, as she saw Henry 
 gain the shore and as, believing himself alone, he hur- 
 ried northward. She went with him, paralleling his 
 course among the trees. On the wind-swept ridges of
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE DRUM 345 
 
 the ice, where there was little snow, he could travel for 
 long stretches faster than she; she struggled to keep 
 even with him, her lungs seared by the cold air as she 
 gasped for breath. But she could not rest; she could 
 not let herself be exhausted. Merciless minute after 
 minute she raced him thus A dark shape a figure 
 lay stretched upon the ice ahead! Beyond and still 
 farther out, something which seemed the fragments of 
 a lifeboat tossed up and down where the waves thun* 
 dered and gleamed at the edge of the floe. 
 
 Henry's pace quickened; hers quickened desperately 
 too. She left the shelter of the trees and scrambled 
 down the steep pitch of the bluff, shouting, crying 
 aloud. Henry turned about and saw her; he halted, 
 and she passed him with a rush and got between him 
 and the form upon the ice, before she turned and faced 
 him. 
 
 Defeat defeat of whatever frightful purpose he 
 had had was his now that she was there to witness 
 what he might do ; and in his realization of that, he 
 burst out in oaths against her He advanced ; she 
 stood, confronting he swayed slightly in his walk 
 and swung past her and away; he went past those 
 things on the beach and kept on along the ice hummocks 
 toward the north. 
 
 She ran to the huddled figure of the man in mack- 
 inaw and cap ; his face was hidden partly by the 
 position in which he lay and partly by the drifting 
 snow; but, before she swept the snow away and turned 
 him to her, she knew that he was Alan. 
 
 She cried to him and, when he did not answer, she 
 shook him to get him awake ; but she could not rouse 
 him. Praying in wild whispers to herself, she opened
 
 346 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 his jacket and felt within his clothes; he was warm 
 at least he was not frozen within ! No ; and there 
 seemed some stir of his heart ! She tried to lift him, to 
 carry him ; then to drag him. But she could not ; he 
 fell from her arms into the snow again, and she sat 
 down, pulling him upon her lap and clasping him to her. 
 She must have aid, she must get him to some house, 
 she must take him out of the terrible cold; but dared 
 she leave him? Might Henry return, if she went away? 
 She arose and looked about. Far up the shore she saw 
 his figure rising and falling with his flight over the 
 rough ice. A sound came to her too, the low, deep 
 reverberation of the Drum beating once more along the 
 shore and in the woods and out upon the lake; and it 
 seemed to her that Henry's figure, in the stumbling 
 steps of its flight, was keeping time to the wild rhythm 
 of that sound. And she stooped to Alan and covered 
 him with her coat, before leaving him; for she feared 
 no longer Henry's return.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THB FATE OF THE " MIWAKA 
 
 " No, Alan ; this is an Indian's house, but it 
 is not mine. It is Adam Enos' house. He and 
 his wife went somewhere else when you needed this." 
 
 " He helped to bring me here then? " 
 
 " No, Alan. They were alone here she and 
 Adam's wife. When she found you, they brought you 
 here more than a mile along the beach. Two 
 women ! " 
 
 Alan choked as he put down the little porcupine quill 
 box which had started this line of inquiry. Whatever 
 questions he had asked of Judah or of Sherrill these last 
 few days had brought him very quickly back to her. 
 Moved by some intuitive certainty regarding Spearman, 
 she had come north ; she had not thought of peril to 
 herself; she had struggled alone across dangerous ice 
 in storm a girl brought up as she had been ! She 
 had found him Alan with life almost extinct upon 
 the beach; she and the Indian woman, Wassaquam had 
 just said, had brought him along the shore. How had 
 they managed that, he wondered ; they had somehow got 
 him to this house which, in his ignorance of exactly 
 where he was upon the mainland, he had thought must 
 be Wassaquam's; she had gone to get help His
 
 348 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 throat closed up, and his eyes filled as he thought of 
 this. 
 
 In the week during which he had been cared for here, 
 Alan had not seen Constance; but there had been a 
 peculiar and exciting alteration in Sherrill's manner 
 toward him, he had felt; it was something more than 
 merely liking for him that Sherrill had showed, and 
 Sherrill had spoken of her to him as Constance, not, as 
 he had called her always before, " Miss Sherrill " or 
 " my daughter." Alan had had dreams which had 
 seemed impossible of fulfilment, of dedicating his life 
 and all that he could make of it to her ; now Sherrill's 
 manner had brought to him something like awe, as of 
 something quite incredible. 
 
 When he had believed that disgrace was his dis- 
 grace because he was Benjamin Corvet's son he had 
 hidden, or tried to hide, his feeling toward her ; he 
 knew now that he was not Corvet's son ; Spearman had 
 shot his father, Corvet had said. But he could not be 
 certain yet who his father was or what revelation re- 
 garding himself might now be given. Could he dare to 
 betray that he was thinking of Constance as as he 
 could not keep from thinking? He dared not without 
 daring to dream that Sherrill's manner meant that she 
 could care for him; and that he could not presume. 
 What she had undergone for him her venture alone 
 up the beach and that dreadful contest which had taken 
 place between her and Spearman must remain cir- 
 cumstances which he had learned but from which he 
 could not yet take conclusions. 
 
 He turned to the Indian. 
 
 " Has anything more been heard of Spearman, Ju- 
 dah?"
 
 THE FATE OF THE " MIWAKA " 349 
 
 " Only this, Alan ; he crossed the Straits the 
 next day upon the ferry there. In Mackinaw City 
 he bought liquor at a bar and took it with him; he 
 asked there about trains into the northwest. He 
 has gone, leaving all he had. What else could he 
 do?" 
 
 Alan crossed the little cabin and looked out the win- 
 dow over the snow-covered slope, where the bright sun 
 was shining. It was very still without; there was no 
 motion at all in the pines toward the ice-bound shore; 
 and the shadow of the wood smoke rising from the 
 cabin chimney made almost a straight line across the 
 snow. Snow had covered any tracks that there had 
 been upon the beach where those who had been in the 
 boat with him had been found dead. He had known 
 that this must be; he had believed them beyond aid 
 when he had tried for the shore to summon help for 
 them and for himself. The other boat, which had car- 
 ried survivors of the wreck, blown farther to the south, 
 had been able to gain the shore of North Fox Island; 
 and as these men had not been so long exposed before 
 they were brought to shelter, four men lived. Sherrill 
 had told him their names; they were the mate, the 
 assistant engineer, a deckhand and Father Perron, the 
 priest who had been a passenger but who had stayed 
 with the crew till the last. Benjamin Corvet had per- 
 ished in the wreckage of the cars. 
 
 As Alan went back to his chair, the Indian watched 
 him and seemed not displeased. 
 
 " You feel good now, Alan ? " Wassaquam asked. 
 
 " Almost like myself, Judah." 
 
 " That is right then. It was thought you would be 
 like that to-day." He looked at the long shadows and
 
 350 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 at the height of the early morning sun, estimating the 
 time of day. " A sled is coming soon now." 
 
 " We're going to leave here, Judah? " 
 
 " Yes, Alan." 
 
 Was he going to see her then? Excitement stirred 
 him, and he turned to Wassaquam to ask that ; but 
 suddenly he hesitated and did not inquire. 
 
 Wassaquam brought the mackinaw and cap which 
 Alan had worn on Number 25 ; he took from the bed 
 the new blankets which had been furnished by Sherrill. 
 They waited until a farmer appeared driving a team 
 hitched to a low, wide-runnered sled. The Indian set- 
 tled Alan on the sled, and they drove off. 
 
 The farmer looked frequently at Alan-with curious 
 interest; the sun shone down, dazzling, and felt almost 
 warm in the still air. Wassaquam, with regard for 
 the frostbite from which Alan had been suffering, bun- 
 dled up the blankets around him ; but Alan put them 
 down reassuringly. They traveled south along the 
 shore, rounded into Little Traverse Bay, and the 
 houses of Harbor Point appeared among their pines. 
 Alan could see plainly that these were snow-weighted 
 and boarded up without sign of occupation ; but he saw 
 that the Sherrill house was open; smoke rose from the 
 chimney, and the windows winked with the reflection 
 of a red blaze within. He was so sure that this was 
 their destination that he started to throw off the robes. 
 
 "Nobody there now," Wassaquam indicated the 
 house. " At Petoskey ; we go on there." 
 
 The sled proceeded across the edge of the bay to 
 the little city ; even before leaving the bay ice, Alan saw 
 Constance and her father; they were walking at the 
 water front near to the railway station, and they
 
 THE FATE OF THE " MIWAKA " 351 
 
 came out on the ice as they recognized the occupants 
 of the sled. 
 
 Alan felt himself alternately weak and roused to 
 strength as he saw her. The sled halted and, as she 
 approached, he stepped down. Their eyes encoun- 
 tered, and hers looked away; a sudden shyness, which 
 sent his heart leaping, had come over her. He wanted 
 to speak to her, to make some recognition to her of 
 what she had done, but he did not dare to trust his 
 voice; and she seemed to understand that. He turned 
 to Sherrill instead. An engine and tender coupled to 
 a single car stood at the railway station. 
 
 " We're going to Chicago ? " he inquired of Sherrill. 
 
 " Not yet, Alan to St. Ignace. Father Perron 
 the priest, you know went to St. Ignace as soon 
 as he recovered from his exposure. He sent word to 
 me that he wished to see me at my convenience; I told 
 him that we would go to him as soon as you were 
 able." 
 
 " He sent no other word than that? " 
 
 " Only that he had a very grave communication to 
 make to us." 
 
 Alan did not ask more ; at mention of Father Perron 
 he had seemed to feel himself once more among the 
 crashing, charging freight cars on the ferry and to 
 see Benjamin Corvet, pinned amid the wreckage and 
 speaking into the ear of the priest. 
 
 Father Perron, walking up and down upon the docks 
 close to the railway station at St. Ignace, where the 
 tracks end without bumper or blocking of any kind 
 above the waters of the lake, was watching south di- 
 rectly across the Straits. It was mid-afternoon and
 
 352 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 the ice-crusher Ste. Marie, which had been expected at 
 St. Ignace about this time, was still some four miles 
 out. During the storm of the week before, the floes 
 had jammed into that narrow neck between the great 
 lakes of Michigan and Huron until, men said, the 
 Straits were ice-filled to the bottom ; but the Ste. Marie 
 and the St. Ignace had plied steadily back and forth. 
 
 Through a stretch where the ice-crusher now was the 
 floes had changed position, or new ice was blocking the 
 channel ; for the Ste. Marie, having stopped, was back- 
 ing; now her funnels shot forth fresh smoke, and she 
 charged ahead. The priest clenched his hands as the 
 steamer met the shock and her third propeller the 
 one beneath her bow sucked the water out from un- 
 der the floe and left it without support ; she met the ice 
 barrier, crashed some of it aside; she broke through, 
 recoiled, halted, charged, climbed up the ice and broke 
 through again. As she drew nearer now in her ap- 
 proach, the priest walked back toward the railway 
 station. 
 
 It was not merely a confessional which Father Per- 
 ron had taken from the lips of the dying man on Num- 
 ber 25 ; it was an accusation of crime against another 
 man as well ; and the confession and accusation both 
 had been made, not only to gain forgiveness from God, 
 but to right terrible wrongs. If the confession left 
 some things unexplained, it did not lack confirmation; 
 the priest had learned enough to be certain that it 
 was no hallucination of madness. He had been 
 charged definitely to repeat what had been told him 
 to the persons he was now going to meet ; so he watched 
 expectantly as the Ste. Marie made its landing. A 
 train of freight cars was upon the ferry, but a single
 
 THE FATE OF THE " MIWAKA " 353 
 
 passenger coach was among them, and the switching 
 engine brought this off first. A tall, handsome man 
 whom Father Perron thought must be the Mr. Sherrill 
 with whom he had communicated appeared upon the 
 car platform; the young man from Number 25 fol- 
 lowed him, and the two helped down a young and beau- 
 tiful girl. 
 
 They recognized the priest by his dress and came 
 toward him at once. 
 
 "Mr. Sherrill?" Father Perron inquired. 
 
 Sherrill assented, taking the priest's hand and in- 
 troducing his daughter. 
 
 " I am glad to see you safe, Mr. Stafford." The 
 priest had turned to Alan. " We have thanks to offer 
 up for that, you and I ! " 
 
 " I am his son, then ! I thought that must be so." 
 
 Alan trembled at the priest's sign of confirmation. 
 There was no shock of surprise in this ; he had sus- 
 pected ever since August, when Captain Stafford's 
 watch and the wedding ring had so strangely come to 
 Constance, that he might be Stafford's son. His in- 
 quiries had brought him, at that time, to St. Ignace, 
 as Father Perron's had brought him now; but he had 
 not been able to establish proof of any connection be- 
 tween himself and the baby son of Captain Stafford who 
 had been born in that town. 
 
 He looked at Constance, as they followed the priest 
 to the motor which ^as waiting to take them to the 
 house of old Father Benitot, whose guest Father Per- 
 ron was ; she was very quiet. What would that grave 
 statement which Father Perron was to make to them 
 mean to him to Alan ? Would further knowledge 
 about that father whom he had not known, but whose
 
 354 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 blood was his and whose name he now must bear, bring 
 pride or shame to him? 
 
 A bell was tolling somewhere, as they followed the 
 priest into Father Benitot's small, bare room which had 
 been prepared for their interview. Father Perron 
 went to a desk and took therefrom some notes which 
 he had made. He did not seem, as he looked through 
 these notes, to be refreshing his memory ; rather he 
 seemed to be seeking something which the notes did not 
 supply ; for he put them back and reclosed the desk. 
 
 " What I have," he said, speaking more particularly 
 to Sherrill, " is the terrible, not fully coherent state- 
 ment of a dying man. It has given me names also 
 it has given me facts. But isolated. It does not give 
 what came before or what came after; therefore, it 
 does not make plain. I hope that, as Benjamin Cor- 
 vet's partner, you can furnish what I lack." 
 
 " What is it you want to know ? " Sherrill asked. 
 
 "What were the relations between Benjamin Cor- 
 vet and Captain Stafford?" 
 
 Sherrill thought a moment. 
 
 " Corvet," he replied, " was a very able man ; he had 
 insight and mental grasp and he had the fault which 
 sometimes goes with those, a hesitancy of action. 
 Stafford was an able man too, considerably younger 
 than Corvet. We, ship owners of the lakes, have not 
 the world to trade in, Father Perron, as they have 
 upon the sea; if you observe our great shipping lines 
 you will find that they have, it would seem, apportioned 
 among themselves the traffic of the lakes ; each line 
 has its own connections and its own ports. But this 
 did not come through agreement, but through con- 
 flict; the strong have survived and made a division of
 
 THE FATE OF THE MIWAKA " 355 
 
 the traffic; the weak have died. Twenty years ago, 
 when this conflict of competing interests was at its 
 height, Corvet was the head of one line, Stafford was 
 head of another, and the two lines had very much the 
 same connections and competed for the same car- 
 goes." 
 
 " I begin to see ! " Father Perron exclaimed. 
 " Please go on." 
 
 " In the early nineties both lines still were young ; 
 Stafford had, I believe, two ships ; Corvet had three." 
 
 "So few? Yes; it grows plainer!" 
 
 " In 1894, Stafford managed a stroke which, if fate 
 had not intervened, must have assured the ultimate 
 extinction of Corvet's line or its absorption into Staf- 
 ford's. Stafford gained as his partner Franklin 
 Ramsdell, a wealthy man whom he had convinced that 
 the lake traffic offered chances of great profit; and 
 this connection supplied him with the capital whose 
 lack had been hampering him, as it was still hamper- 
 ing Corvet. The new firm Stafford and Ramsdell 
 projected the construction, with Ramsdell's money, 
 of a number of great steel freighters. The first of 
 these the Miwaka, a test ship whose experience was 
 to guide them in the construction of the rest was 
 launched in the fall of 1895, and was lost on its maiden 
 trip with both Stafford and Ramsdell aboard. The 
 Stafford and Ramsdell interests could not survive the 
 death of both owners and disappeared from the lakes. 
 Is this what you wanted to know ? " 
 
 The priest nodded. Alan leaned tensely forward, 
 watching; what he had heard seemed to have increased 
 and deepened the priest's feeling over what he had to 
 tell and to have aided his comprehension of it.
 
 356 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " His name was Caleb Stafford," Father Perron be- 
 gan. " (This is what Benjamin Corvet told to me, 
 when he was dying under the wreckage on the ferry.) 
 * He was as fair and able a man as the lakes ever knew. 
 I had my will of most men in the lake trade in those 
 days; but I could not have my will of him. With all 
 the lakes to trade in, he had to pick out for his that 
 traffic which I already had chosen for my own. But I 
 fought him fair, Father I fought him fair, and I 
 would have continued to do that to the end. 
 
 " ' I was at Manistee, Father, in the end of the sea- 
 son December fifth of 1895. The ice had begun to 
 form very early that year and was already bad; there 
 was cold and a high gale. I had laid up one of my 
 ships at Manistee, and I was crossing that night upon 
 a tug to Manitowoc, where another was to be laid up. 
 I had still a third one lading upon the northern penin- 
 sula at Manistique for a last trip which, if it could be 
 made, would mean a good profit from a season which so 
 far, because of Stafford's competition, had been only 
 fair. After leaving Manistee, it grew still more cold, 
 and I was afraid the ice would close in on her and keep 
 her where she was, so I determined to go north that 
 night and see that she got out. None knew, Father, 
 except those aboard the tug, that I had made that 
 change. 
 
 " ' At midnight, Father, to westward of the Foxes, 
 we heard the four blasts of a steamer in distress 
 the four long blasts which have sounded in my soul 
 ever since! jWe turned toward where we saw the 
 steamer's lights ; we went nearer and, Father, it was 
 his great, new ship the Miwaka! We had heard 
 two days before that she had passed the Soo; we had
 
 THE FATE OF THE " MIWAKA " 357 
 
 not known more than that of where she was. She had 
 broken her new shaft, Father, and was intact except 
 for that, but helpless in the rising sea . . .' " 
 
 The priest broke off. "The Miwaka! I did not 
 understand all that that had meant to him until just 
 now the new ship of the rival line, whose building 
 meant for him failure and defeat ! 
 
 " There is no higher duty than the rescue of those in 
 peril at sea. He Ben j amin Corvet, who told me 
 this swore to me that, at the beginning none upon 
 the tug had any thought except to give aid. A small 
 line was drifted down to the tug and to this a hawser 
 was attached which they hauled aboard. There hap- 
 pened then the first of those events which led those upon 
 the tug into doing a great wrong. He Benj amin 
 Corvet had taken charge of the wheel of the tug; 
 three men were handling the hawser in ice and washing 
 water at the stern. The whistle accidentally blew, 
 which those on the Miwaka understood to mean that 
 the hawser had been secured, so they drew in the slack ; 
 the hawser, tightened unexpectedly by the pitching of 
 the sea, caught and crushed the captain and deckhand 
 of the tug and threw them into the sea. 
 
 " Because they were short-handed now upon the tug, 
 and also because consultation was necessary over what 
 was to be done, the young owner of the Miwaka, Cap- 
 tain Stafford, came down the hawser onto the tug 
 after the line had bee* put straight. He came to the 
 wheelhouse, where Benjamin Corvet was, and they con- 
 sulted. Then Benjamin Corvet learned that the other 
 owner was aboard the new ship as well Ramsdell 
 the man whose money you have just told me had built 
 this and was soon to build other ships. I did not un-
 
 358 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 derstand before why learning that affected him so 
 much. 
 
 " * Stafford wanted us ' (this is what Benjamin Cor- 
 vet said) * to tow him up the lake ; I would not do that, 
 but I agreed to tow him to Manistique. The night 
 was dark, Father no snow, but frightful wind which 
 had been increasing until it now sent the waves washing 
 clear across the tug. We had gone north an hour 
 when, low upon the water to my right, I saw a light, 
 and there came to me the whistling of a buoy which told 
 me that we were passing nearer than I would have 
 wished, even in daytime, to windward of Boulder Reef. 
 There are, Father, no people on that reef; its sides of 
 ragged rock go straight down forty fathoms into the 
 lake. 
 
 " ' I looked at the man with me in the wheelhouse 
 at Stafford and hated him ! I put my head out at 
 the wheelhouse door and looked back at the lights at the 
 new, great steamer, following safe and straight at the 
 end of its towline. I thought of my two men upon the 
 tug who had been crushed by clumsiness of those on 
 board that ship ; and how my own ships had had a 
 name for never losing a man and that name would be 
 lost now because of the carelessness of Stafford's men ! 
 And the sound of the shoal brought the evil thought 
 to me. Suppose I had not happened across his ship; 
 would it have gone upon some reef like this and been 
 lost? I thought that if now the hawser should break, 
 I would be rid of that ship and perhaps of the owner 
 who was on board as well. We could not pick up the 
 tow line again so close to the reef. The steamer 
 would drift down upon the rocks ' " 
 
 Father Perron hesitated an instant. " I bear wit-
 
 THE FATE OF THE MIWAKA " 359 
 
 ness," he said solemnly, " that Benjamin Corvet as- 
 sured me his priest that it was only a thought; 
 the evil act which it suggested was something which he 
 would not do or even think of doing. But he spoke 
 something of what was in his mind to Stafford, for he 
 said : 
 
 " * I must look like a fool to you to keep on towing 
 your ship ! ' 
 
 " They stared, he told me, into one another's eyes, 
 and Stafford grew uneasy. 
 
 < We'd have been all right,' he answered, * until we 
 had got help, if you'd left us where we were ! ' He too 
 listened to the sound of the buoy and of the water 
 dashing on the shoal. ' You are taking us too close,' 
 he said * too close ! ' He went aft then to look at 
 the tow line." 
 
 Father Perron's voice ceased ; what he had to tell now 
 made his face whiten as he arranged it in his memory. 
 Alan leaned forward a little and then, with an effort, 
 sat straight. Constance turned and gazed at him; but 
 he dared not look at her. He felt her hand warm upon 
 his ; it rested there a moment and moved away. 
 
 " There was a third man in the wheelhouse when 
 these things were spoken," Father Perron said, " the 
 mate of the ship which had been laid up at Manis- 
 tee." 
 
 " Henry Spearman," Sherrill supplied. 
 
 "That is the name. Benjamin Corvet told me of 
 that man that he was young, determined, brutal, and 
 set upon getting position and wealth for himself by 
 any means. He watched Corvet and Stafford while 
 they were speaking, and he too listened to the shoal 
 until Stafford had come back ; then he went aft.
 
 360 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 " ' I looked at him, Father,' Benjamin Corvet said 
 to me, ' and I let him go not knowing. He came 
 back and looked at me once more, and went again to 
 the stern; Stafford had been watching him as well as 
 I, and he sprang away from me now and scrambled 
 after him. The tug leaped suddenly; there was no 
 longer any tow holding it back, for the hawser had 
 parted ; and I knew, Father, the reason was that Spear- 
 man had cut it ! 
 
 " ' 1 rang for the engine to be slowed, and I left the 
 wheel and went aft ; some struggle was going on at the 
 stern of the tug; a flash came from there and the 
 cracking of a shot. Suddenly all was light about me 
 as, aware of the breaking of the hawser and alarmed 
 by the shot, the searchlight of the Miwdka turned upon 
 the tug. The cut end of the hawser was still upon the 
 tug, and Spearman had been trying to clear this when 
 Stafford attacked him ; they fought, and Stafford 
 struck Spearman down. He turned and cried out 
 against me accusing me of having ordered Spearman 
 to cut the line. He held up the cut end toward Rams- 
 dell on the Miwaka and cried out to him and showed 
 by pointing that it had been cut. Blood was running 
 from the hand with which he pointed, for he had been 
 shot by Spearman; and now again and a second and a 
 third time, from where he lay upon the deck, Spearman 
 fired. The second of those shots killed the engineer 
 who had rushed out where I was on the deck ; the third 
 shot went through Stafford's head. The Mvwaka was 
 drifting down upon the reef ; her whistle sounded again 
 and again the four long blasts. The fireman, who had 
 followed the engineer up from below, fawned on me ! I 
 was safe for all of him, he said ; I could trust Luke
 
 THE FATE OF THE " MIWAKA " 361 
 
 Luke would not tell! He too thought I had ordered 
 the doing of that thing ! 
 
 " ' From the Miwaka, Ramsdell yelled curses at me, 
 threatening me for what he thought that I had done! 
 I looked at Spearman as he got up from the deck, and 
 I read the thought that had been in him; he had be- 
 lieved that he could cut the hawser in the dark, none 
 seeing, and that our word that it had been broken 
 would have as much strength as any accusation Staf- 
 ford could make. He had known that to share a secret 
 such as that with me would " make " him on the lakes ; 
 for the loss of the Miieaka would cripple Stafford and 
 Ramsdell and strengthen me; and he could make me 
 share with him whatever success I made. But Stafford 
 had surprised him at the hawser and had seen. 
 
 " ' I moved to denounce him, Father, as I realized 
 this; I moved but stopped. He had made himself 
 safe against accusation by me ! None none ever 
 would believe that he had done this except by my order, 
 if he should claim that ; and he made plain that he was 
 going to claim that. He called me a fool and defied 
 me. Luke even my own man, the only one left on 
 the tug with us believed it ! And there was murder 
 in it now, with Stafford dying there upon the deck and 
 with the certainty that all those on the Miwaka could 
 not be saved. I felt the noose as if it had been already 
 tied about my neck! And I had done no wrong, 
 Father! I had only thought wrong! 
 
 " ' So long as one lived among those on the Miwaka 
 who had seen what was done, I knew I would be hanged ; 
 yet I would have saved them if I could. But, in my. 
 comprehension of what this meant, I only stared at 
 Stafford where he lay and then at Spearman, and I let
 
 362 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 him get control of the tug. The tug, whose wheel I 
 had lashed, heading her into the waves, had been mov- 
 ing slowly. Spearman pushed me aside and went to 
 the wheelhouse; he sent Luke to the engines, and from 
 that moment Luke was his. He turned the tug about 
 to where we still saw the lights of the Miwaka. The 
 steamer had struck upon the reef; she hung there for 
 a time ; and Spearman he had the wheel and Luke, 
 at his orders, was at the engine held the tug off and 
 we beat slowly to and fro until the Miwaka slipped 
 off and sank. Some had gone down with her, no 
 doubt; but two boats had got off, carrying lights. 
 They saw the tug approaching and cried out and 
 stretched their hands to us ; but Spearman stopped the 
 tug. They rowed towards us then, but when they 
 got near, Spearman moved the tug away from them, 
 and then again stopped. They cried out again and 
 rowed toward us; again he moved the tug away, and 
 then they understood and stopped rowing and cried 
 curses at us. One boat soon drifted far away; we 
 knew of its capsizing by the extinguishing of its light. 
 The other capsized near to where we were. Those in it 
 who had no lifebelts and could not swim, sank first. 
 Some could swim and, for a while they fought the 
 
 Alan, as he listened, ceased consciously to separate 
 the priest's voice from the sensations running through 
 him. His father was Stafford, dying at Corvet's feet 
 while Corvet watched the death of the crew of the 
 MiwaJca; Alan himself, a child, was floating with a life- 
 belt among those struggling in the water whom Spear- 
 man and Corvet were watching die. Memory ; was it 
 that which now had come to him? No; rather it was
 
 THE FATE OF THE " MIWAKA " 363 
 
 a realization of all the truths which the priest's words 
 were bringing together and arranging rightly for him. 
 
 He, a child, saved by Corvet from the water because 
 he could not bear witness, seemed to be on that tug, 
 sea-swept and clad in ice, crouching beside the form 
 of his father while Corvet stood aghast Corvet, still 
 hearing the long blasts of distress from the steamer 
 which was gone, still hearing the screams of the men 
 who were drowned. Then, when all were gone who 
 could tell, Spearman turned the tug to Manitowoc. 
 . . . Now again the priest's voice became audible to 
 Alan. 
 
 Alan's father died in the morning. All day they 
 stayed out in the storm, avoiding vessels. They dared 
 not throw Stafford's body overboard or that of the en- 
 gineer, because, if found, the bullet holes would have 
 aroused inquiry. When night came again, they had 
 taken the two ashore at some wild spot and buried 
 them; to make identification harder, they had taken 
 the things that they had with them and buried them 
 somewhere else. The child Alan Corvet had 
 smuggled ashore and sent away ; he had told Spearman 
 later that the child had died. 
 
 "Peace rest!" Father Perron said in a deep 
 voice. " Peace to the dead ! " 
 
 But for the living there had been no peace. Spear- 
 man had forced Corvet to make him his partner ; Cor- 
 vet had tried to take up his life again, but had not 
 been able. His wife, aware that something was wrong 
 with him, had learned enough so that she had left him. 
 Luke had come and come and come again for black- 
 mail, and Corvet had paid him. Corvet grew rich; 
 those connected with him prospered; but with Corvet
 
 364 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 lived always the ghosts of those he had watched die 
 with the M'vwaka of those who would have prospered 
 with Stafford except for what had been done. Corvet 
 had secretly sought and followed the fate of the kin 
 of those people who had been murdered to benefit him; 
 he found some of their families destroyed; he found 
 almost all poor and struggling. And though Corvet 
 paid Luke to keep the crime from disclosure, yet Cor- 
 vet swore to himself to confess it all and make such 
 restitution as he could. But each time that the day 
 he had appointed with himself arrived, he put it off and 
 off and paid Luke again and again. Spearman knew 
 of his intention and sometimes kept him from it. But 
 Corvet had made one close friend; and when that 
 friend's daughter, for whom Corvet cared now most of 
 all in the world, had been about to marry Spearman, 
 Corvet defied the cost to himself, and he gained 
 strength to oppose Spearman. So he had written to 
 Stafford's son to come ; he had prepared for confession 
 and restitution ; but, after he had done this and while 
 he waited, something had seemed to break in his brain ; 
 too long preyed upon by terrible memories, and the 
 ghosts of those who had gone, and by the echo of their 
 voices crying to him from the water, Corvet had wan- 
 dered away ; he had come back, under the name of one 
 of those whom he had wronged, to the lake life from 
 which he had sprung. Only now and then, for a few 
 hours, he had intervals when he remembered all; in 
 one of these he had dug up the watch and the ring and 
 other things which he had taken from Captain Staf- 
 ford's pockets and written to himself directions of what 
 to do with them, when his mind again failed. 
 
 And for Spearman, strong against all that assailed
 
 THE FATE OF THE " MIWAKA " 365 
 
 Corvet, there had been always the terror of the Indian 
 Drum the Drum which had beat short for the Mi- 
 waka, the Drum which had known that one was saved ! 
 That story came from some hint which Luke had 
 spread, Corvet thought; but Spearman, born near by 
 the Drum, believed that the Drum had known and that 
 the Drum had tried to tell; all through the years 
 Spearman had dreaded the Drum which had tried to 
 betray him. 
 
 So it was by the Drum that, in the end, Spearman 
 was broken. 
 
 The priest's voice had stopped, as Alan slowly real- 
 ized ; he heard Sherrill's voice speaking to him. 
 
 " It was a trust that he left you, Alan ; I thought 
 it must be that a trust for those who suffered by the 
 loss of your father's ship. I don't know yet how it 
 can be fulfilled ; and we must think of that." 
 
 " That's how I understand it," Alan said. 
 
 Fuller consciousness of what Father Perron's story 
 meant to him was flowing through him now. Wrong, 
 great wrong there had been, as he had known there 
 must be; but it had not been as he had feared, for he 
 and his had been among the wronged ones. The name 
 the new name that had come to him he knew what 
 that must be : Robert Alan Stafford ; and there was no 
 shadow on it. He was the son of an honest man and 
 a good woman ; he was clean and free ; free to think as 
 he was thinking now of the girl beside him ; and to hope 
 that she was thinking so of him. 
 
 Through the tumult in his soul he became aware of 
 physical feelings again, and of Sherrill's hand put upon 
 his shoulder in a cordial, friendly grasp. Then an- 
 other hand, small and firm, touched his, and he felt its
 
 366 THE INDIAN DRUM 
 
 warm, tightening grasp upon his fingers ; he looked up, 
 and his eyes filled and hers, he saw, were brimming too. 
 
 They walked together, later in the day, up the hill 
 to the small, white house which had been Caleb Staf- 
 ford's. Alan had seen the house before but, not know- 
 ing then whether the man who had owned it had or had 
 not been his father, he had merely looked at it from the 
 outside. There had been a small garden filled with 
 flowers before it then; now yard and roofs were buried 
 deep in snow. The woman who came to the door was 
 willing to show them through the house; it had only 
 five rooms. One of those upon the second floor was so 
 much larger and pleasanter than the rest that they 
 became quite sure that it was the one in which Alan 
 had been born, and where his young mother soon 
 afterward had died. 
 
 They were very quiet as they stood looking about. 
 
 " I wish we could have known her," Constance said. 
 
 The woman, who had showed them about, had gone 
 to another room and left them alone. 
 
 " There seems to have been no picture of her and 
 nothing of hers left here that any one can tell me 
 about ; but," Alan choked, " it's good to be able to 
 think of her as I can now." 
 
 " I know," Constance said. " When you were away, 
 I used to think of you as finding out about her and 
 and I wanted to be with you. I'm glad I'm with you 
 now, though you don't need me any more ! " 
 
 " Not need you ! " 
 
 " I mean no one can say anything against her 
 now ! " 
 
 Alan drew nearer her, trembling.
 
 THE FATE OF THE " MIWAKA " 367 
 
 " I can never thank you I can never tell you what 
 you did for me, believing in her and in me, no mat- 
 ter how things looked. And then, coming up hoe as 
 you did for me ! " 
 
 " Yes, it was for you, Alan ! " 
 
 "Constance!" He caught her. She let him hold 
 her; then, still clinging to him, she put him a little 
 away. 
 
 " The night before you came to the Point last sum- 
 mer, Alan, he he had just come and asked me aftain. 
 I'd promised ; but we motored that evening to his place 
 and there were sunflowers there, and I knew that 
 night I couldn't love him." 
 
 " Because of the sunflowers ? " 
 
 " Sunflower houses, Alan, they made me think of ; do 
 you remember? " 
 
 "Remember!" 
 
 The woman was returning to them now and, per- 
 haps, it was as well; for not yet, he knew, could he ask 
 her all that he wished ; what had happened was too re- 
 cent yet for that. But to him, Spearman half mad 
 and fleeing from the haunts of men was beginning 
 to be like one who had never been ; and he knew she 
 shared this feeling. The light in her deep eyes was 
 telling him already what her answer to him would be; 
 and life stretched forth before him full of love *nd 
 happiness and hope. 
 
 THE END
 
 ZANE GREY'S NOVELS 
 
 y b hid whatever boohs ira sold. Ask for Grotttt t Bunlap't list 
 iTHE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS 
 
 ' A New York society girl bays a ranch which becomes the center of frontier war- 
 fare. Her loyal superintendent rescues her when she is captured by bandits. A 
 surprising: rlimaT brings the story to a delightful close. 
 
 THE RAINBOW TRAIL 
 
 The story of a young clergyman who uecomes a wanderer in the creat western 
 uplands until at last love and faith awake. 
 
 DESERT GOLD 
 
 The story describes the recent uprising alone the border, and ends with the finding 
 of the gold which two prospectors had willed to the girl who is the story's heroine. 
 
 RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE 
 
 A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon authority 
 ruled! The prosecution of Jane Withersteen is the theme.of the story. 
 
 THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN 
 
 This is the record of a trip which the author took with Buffalo Jones, known as the 
 preserver of the American bison, across fhe Arizona desert and of a butt in "(hat 
 wonderful country of deep canons and giant pines." 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT 
 
 A lovely girl, wbo has been reared among Mormons, learns to love a young New 
 Englander. The Mormon religion, however, demands that the girl shall become 
 the second wife of one of the Mormons Well, that's the problem ol this great story. 
 
 THE SHORT STOP 
 
 The young hero, tiring of his factory grind, starts out to win fame and fortune as 
 l professional ball player. His hard knocks at the start are followed by such success 
 as clean sportsmanship, courage and honesty ought to win. 
 
 BETTY ZANE 
 
 This story tells of the bravery and heroism of Betty, the beautiful young sister of 
 old Colonel Zane, one of the bravest pioneers. 
 
 THE LONE STAR RANGER 
 
 After killing a man in self defense, Buck Duane becomes an outlaw along the 
 Texas border. In a camp on the Mexican side of the river, he finds a young girfheld 
 prisoner, and in attempting: to rescue her, brings down upon himself the wrath of her 
 captors and henceforth is hunted on one side by honest men, on the other by outlaws. 
 
 THE BORDER LEGION 
 
 Joan Randle, in a spirit of anger, sent Jim Cleve out to a lawless Western minin 
 camp, to prove bis mettle. Then realizing that she loved him she followed him out. 
 On her way, she is captured by a bandit band, and trouble begins when she shoots 
 Kells, the leader and nurses him to health again. Here enters another romance- 
 when Joan, disguised as an outlaw, observes Jim, in the throes of dissipation. A gold 
 strike, a thrilling robbery gambling and gun play carry you along breathlessly. 
 
 THE LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS. 
 By Helen Cody Wetmore and Zane Grey 
 
 ' The life story of Colonel William F. Cody, " Buffalo Bill." as told by his sister and 
 Zane Gy. It begins with his boyhood in Iowa and his first encounter with an In- 
 dian. We see " Bill " as a pony express rider, then near Fort Sumter as Chief of 
 the Scouts, and later engaged in the most dangerous Indian campaigns. There is 
 also a very interesting account of the travels of "The Wild West" Show. No char- 
 acter In public life makes a stronger appeal to the imagination of America than 
 Buffalo BUI," whose daring and bravery made him famous. 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, "PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP'S 
 DRAMATIZED NOVELS 
 
 Original, sincere and courageous often amusing the 
 kind that are making theatrical history. 
 
 MADAME X. By Alexandra Bisson and J. W. McCon- 
 ] aughy. Illustrated with scenes from the play* 
 A beautiful Parisienne became an outcast because her hus* 
 band would not forgive an error of her youth. Her love fol 
 her son is the great final influence in her career. A tremen- 
 dous dramatic success. 
 
 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. "By Robert Hichens. 
 
 An unconventional English woman and an inscrutable 
 Stranger meet and love in an oasis of the Sahara. Staged 
 this season with magnificent cast and gorgeous properties. 
 
 THE PRINCE OF INDIA. By Lew. Wallace. 
 
 A glowing romance of the Byzantine Empire, presenting 
 'With extraordinary power the siege of Constantinople, and 
 .fighting its tragedy with the warm underflow of an Oriental 
 romance. As a play it is a great dramatic spectacle. 
 
 TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY. By Grace 
 Miller White. Illust by Howard Chandler Christy. 
 A girl from the dregs of society, loves a young Cornell Uni- 
 versity student, and it works startling changes in her life and 
 the lives of those about her. The dramatic version is one of 
 the sensations of the season. 
 
 YOUNG WALLINGFORD. By George Randolph 
 
 Chester. Illust. by F. R. Gruger and Henry Raleigh. 
 
 A series of clever swindles conducted by a cheerful young 
 
 man, each of which is just on the safe side of a State's prison 
 
 offence. As "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford," it is probably 
 
 the most amusing expose of money manipulation ever seen 
 
 On the stage. 
 
 THE INTRUSION OF JIMMY. By P. G. Wode- 
 
 house. Illustrations by Will Grefe. 
 Social and club life in London and New York, an amateur 
 burglary adventure and a love story. Dramatized under the 
 title of "A Gentleman of Leisure," it furnishes hours of 
 laughter to the play-goers. 
 
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 GROSSET& DUNLAP'S 
 DRAMATIZED NOVELS 
 
 THE KIND THAT ARE MAKING THEATRICAL HISTORY 
 May be had wherever books are told. Art for Sronat ft Dunlip' im 
 
 WITHIN THE LAW. By Bayard Vdller & Marvin Dana. 
 Illustrated by Wm. Charles Cooke. 
 
 This is a novelization of the immensely successful play which ran 
 for two years in New York and Chicago. 
 
 The plot of this powerful novel is of a young woman's revenge 
 directed against her employer who allowed her to be sent to prison 
 for three years on a charge of theft, of which she was innocent. 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY. By Robert Carlton Brown. 
 Illustrated with scenes from the play. 
 
 This is a narrative of a young and innocent country girl who is 
 suddenly thrown into the very heart of New York, "the land of hei 
 dreams," where she is exposed to all sorts of temptations and dangers. 
 
 The story of Mary is being told in moving pictures and played ia 
 theatres all over the world. 
 
 THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM. By David Belasco. 
 Illustrated by John Rae, 
 
 This is a novelization of the popular play in which David War, 
 field, as Old Peter Grimm, scored such a remarkable success. 
 
 The story is spectacular and extremely pathetic but withal, 
 powerful, both as a book and as a play. 
 THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. By Robert ffichens.r 
 
 This novel is an intense, glowing epic of the great desert, sunlit 
 barbaric, with its marvelous atmosphere of vastness and loneliness, 
 
 It is a book of rapturous beauty, vivid in word painting. The play 
 has been staged with magnificent cast and gorgeous properties. 
 BEN HUR. A Tale of the Christ By General Lew Wallace. 
 
 The whole world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Ro- 
 mance on a height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its tima 
 has reached. The clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, 
 the perfect reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce 
 atmosphere of the arena have kept their deep fascination. A tre- 
 mendous dramatic success. 
 
 BOUGHT AKD PAID FOR. By George Broadhurst and Arthui 
 Hornblow. Illustrated with scenes from the play. 
 
 A stupendous arraignment of modern marriage which has created 
 an interest on the stage that is almost unparalleled: The scenes are laid 
 in New York, and deal with conditions among both the rich and poor. 
 
 The interest of the story turns on the day-by-day developments 
 which show the young wife the price she has paid. 
 
 AAfor compete fre. X* of G. & D. PofrJar Cofiyrfgl** Fiction 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26th ST.. NEW YORK
 
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 JOHN BARLEYCORN. Illustrated by H. T. Dunn. 
 
 This remarkable book is a record of the author's own amazing 
 experiences. This big, brawny world rover, who has been ac- 
 quainted with alcohol from boyhood, comes out boldly against John 
 Barleycorn. It is a string of exciting adventures, yet it forcefully 
 conveys an unforgetable idea and makes a typical Jack London book. 
 THE VALLEY OF THE MOON. Frontispiece by George Harper. 
 
 The story opens in the city slums where Billy Roberts, teamster 
 and ex-prize fighter, and Saxon Brown, laundry worker, meet and 
 love and marry. They tramp from one end of California to the 
 other, and in the Valley of the Moon find the farm paradise that is 
 to be their salvation. 
 BURNING DAYLIGHT.' Four illustrations. 
 
 The story ot an adventurer who went to Alaska and laid the 
 foundations of his fortune before the gold hunters arrived. Bringing 
 his fortunes to the States he is cheated out of it by a crowd of money 
 kings, and recovers it only at the muzzle of his gun. He then starts 
 out as,a merciless exploiter on his own account. Finally he takes to 
 drinking and becomes a picture of degeneration. About this time 
 he falls in love with his stenographer and wins her heart but not 
 her hand and then but read the story! 
 A SON OF THE SUN. Illustrated by A. O.Fischer and C.W. Ashley. 
 
 David Grief was once a light-haired, blue-eyed youth who came 
 from England to the South Seas in search of adventure. Tanned 
 like a native and as lithe as a tiger, he became a real son of the sun. 
 The lif e appealed to him and he remained and became very wealthy. 
 THE CALL OF THE WILD. Illustrations by Philip R. Goodwin and 
 Charles Livingston Bull. Decorations by Charles E. Hooper. 
 
 A book of dog adventures as exciting as any man's exploits 
 could be. Here is excitement ' to stir the blood and here is pictur- 
 esque color to transport the reader to primitive scenes. 
 THE SEA WOLF. Illustrated by W. J. Aylward. 
 
 Told by a man whom Pate suddenly swings from his fastidious 
 life into the power of the brutal captain of a sealing schooner. A 
 novel of adventure warmed by a beautiful love episode that every 
 reader will hail with delight. > 
 
 WHITE FANG. Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull. 
 
 "White Fang" is part dog, part wolf and all brute, living in the 
 frozen north ; he gradually comes under the spell of man's com- 
 panionship, and surrenders all at the last in a fight with a bull dog. 
 Thereafter he is man's loving slave. '')_, 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
 
 B. M. Bower's Novels 
 
 Thrilling Western Romances 
 
 Large 12 mos. Handsomely bound in cloth. Illustrated 
 
 CHIP, OF THE FLYING U 
 
 A breezy wholesome tale, wherein the love affairs of Chip and 
 Delia Whitman are charmingly and humorously told. Chip's 
 jealousy of Dr. Cecil Grantham, who turns out to be a big. blue 
 eyed young woman is very amusing. A clever, realistic story of 
 the American Cow-puncher. 
 THE HAPPY FAMILY 
 
 A lively and amusing story, dealing with the adventures of 
 eighteen jovial, big hearted Montana cowboys. Foremost amongst 
 them, we find Ananias Green, known as Andy, whose imaginative 
 powers cause many lively and exciting adventures. 
 HER PRAIRIE KNIGHT 
 
 A realistic story of the plains, describing a gay party of Eas- 
 terners who exchange a cottage at Newport for the rough homeli- 
 ness of a Montana ranch-house. The merry-hearted cowboys, the 
 fascinating Beatrice, and the effusive Sir Redmond, become living, 
 breathing personalities. 
 THE RANGE DWELLERS 
 
 Here are everyday, genuine cowboys, just as they really exist. 
 Spirited action, a range feud between two families, and a. Romeo 
 and Juliet courtship make this a bright, jolly, entertaining story, 
 vathout a dull page. 
 THE LURE OF DIM TRAILS 
 
 A vivid portrayal of the experience of an Eastern author, 
 among the cowboys of the West, in search of "local color" for a 
 new novel. "Bud" Thurston learns many a lesson while following 
 "the lure of the dim trails" but the hardest, and probably the most 
 welcome, is that of love. ~- ..f . 
 THE LONESOME TRAIL ^ 
 
 * Weary" Davidson leaves the ranch for Portland, where con- 
 ventional city life palls on him. A little branch of sage brush, 
 pungent with the atmosphere of the prairie, and the recollection of 
 a pair of large brown eyes soon compel his return. _ A wholesome 
 love story, ^f 
 
 THE LONG SHADOW^ 
 
 A vigorous Western story, sparkling with! 'the free, outdoor, 
 life of a mountain ranch. Its scenes shift rapidly and its actors play 
 the game of life fearlessly and like men. It is a fine love story from 
 start to finish. 
 
 Ask (or a complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction. 
 
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 STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS 
 
 Hay be had wherever books are soil Ask for Cresset and Dunlap's list ) 
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE. 
 Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. 
 
 The "lonesome pine" from which the 
 story takes its name was a tall tree that 
 stood in solitary splendor on a mountain 
 top. The fame of the pine lured a young 
 engineer through Kentucky to catch the 
 trail, and when he finally climbed to its 
 shelter he found not only the pine but the 
 footprints of a girl. And the girl proved 
 
 to be lovely, piquant, and the trail of 
 these girlish foot-prints led the young 
 engineer a madder chase than "the trail 
 
 of the lonesome pine." 
 
 THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME 
 Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. 
 
 This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "King- 
 dom Come." It is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural 
 and honest from which often springs the flower of civilization. 
 
 M Chad." the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor 
 whence he. came he had just wandered from door to door since 
 early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who 
 gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was 
 such a mystery a charming waif, by the way, who could play 
 the banjo better that anyone else in the mountains. 
 
 A'KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND. 
 Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. 
 
 The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland* 
 the lair of moonshiner and f eudsman. The knight is a moon- 
 shiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely chris~ 
 tened "The Blight." Two impetuous young Southerners' fall' 
 under the spell of "The Blight's " charms and she learns what 
 a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making of the 
 mountaineers. 
 
 Included in this volume is " Hell fer-Sartain" and other 
 stories, some of Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley 
 narratives. 
 
 Ask for complete fr* list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction 
 
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