rm 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. Corvet'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 boulevard from the city, began slowly to move.
Constance turned the car down the narrow street, fronted by warehouses
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 feeling for ships and
for the lake; a single word--_Miwaka_--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 recollection 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 realization of
the comparatively small land accommodations which a great business
conducted upon the water requires. 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