en 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 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. "Connie!" 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 shoul