e
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 date and the confirming entry of $1,500. The other
papers and books were only such things as might accumulate 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
apartments 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 drawers.

He started and straightened suddenly; then he listened 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 besides his father who had a key. Was it ... his father who
had come back? That, though not impossible, 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 soun