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 Conrad 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 were two of the big
men of their time in the carrying trade on the lakes, but their line
has been out of business for years; both Mr. Stafford and Mr. Ramsdell
were lost with the _Miwaka_."

"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. Stafford, 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 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
experienced. 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. Spearma