ed it
was better for you--for every one--to believe that."

She drew a little away from him, with hands clasped behind her back,
gazing intently at him. "There was some writing found in Uncle Benny's
house in Astor Street--a list of names of relatives of people who had
lost their lives upon the lake. Wassaquam knew where those things
were. Alan says they were given to him in your presence."

She saw the blood rise darkly under his skin. "That is true, Connie."

"Why didn't you tell me about that?"

He straightened as if with anger. "Why should I? Because he thought
that I should? What did he tell you about those lists?"

"I asked you, after you went back, if anything else had happened,
Henry, and you said, 'nothing.' I should not have considered the
finding of those lists 'nothing.'"

"Why not? What were they but names? What has he told you they were,
Connie? What has he said to you?"

"Nothing--except that his father had kept them very secretly; but he's
found out they were names of people who had relatives on the _Miwaka_!"

"What?"

Recalling how her blood had run when Alan had told her that, Henry's
whiteness and the following suffusion of his face did not surprise her.

He turned away a moment and considered. "Where's Conrad now, Connie?"

"He's gone to Frankfort to cross to Manitowoc."

"To get deeper into that mess, I suppose. He'll only be sorry."

"Sorry?"

"I told that fellow long ago not to start stirring these matters up
about Ben Corvet, and particularly I told him that he was not to bring
any of it to you. It's not--a thing that a man like Ben covered up for
twenty years till it drove him crazy is sure not to be a thing for a
girl to know. Conrad seems to have paid no attention to me. But I
should think by this time he ought to begin to suspect what sort of
thing he's going to turn up. I don't know; but I certainly
suspect--Ben leaving everything to that boy, whom no one had heard of,
and the sort of thing which has come up since. It's certainly not
going to be anything pleasant for any of us, Connie--for you, or your
father, or for me, or for anybody who'd cared for Ben, or had been
associated with him. Least of all, I should say, would it prove
anything pleasant for Conrad. Ben ran away from it, because he knew
what it was; why doesn't this fellow let him stay away from it?"

"He--I mean Alan, Henry," she said, "isn't thinking about himself in
this; he isn't thinking