ak 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? What 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 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 evening, 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 business there, entered the house.
Wassaquam had appeared to accept this order; but now Wassaquam had
implied that it was not because of Alan's order tha