n at the bank or in any of the stores
where he had shown it. The shoe dealer had no recollection of that
particular box. Alan, however, was continuing his inquiries.

In September he reported in a brief, totally impersonal note, that he
was continuing with the investigations he had been making previous to
his visit to Harbor Point; this came from Sarnia, Ontario. In October
he sent a different address where he could be found in case anything
more came, such as the box which had come to Constance in August.

She wrote to him in reply each time; in lack of anything more important
to tell him, she related some of her activities and inquired about his.
After she had written him thus twice, he replied, describing his life
on the boats pleasantly and humorously; then, though she immediately
replied, she did not hear from him again.

She had returned to Chicago late in September and soon was very busy
with social affairs, benefits, and bazaars which were given that fall
for the Red Cross and the different Allied causes; a little later came
a series of the more personal and absorbing luncheons and dances and
dinners for her and for Henry, since their engagement, which long had
been taken for granted by every one who knew them, was announced now.
So the days drifted into December and winter again.

The lake, beating against the esplanade across the Drive before
Constance's windows, had changed its color; it had no longer its autumn
blue and silver; it was gray, sluggish with floating needle-points of
ice held in solution. The floe had not yet begun to form, but the
piers and breakwaters had white ice caps frozen from spray--harbingers
of the closing of navigation. The summer boats, those of Corvet,
Sherrill, and Spearman with the rest, were being tied up. The birds
were gone; only the gulls remained--gray, clamorous shapes circling and
calling to one another across the water. Early in December the
newspapers announced the closing of the locks at the "Soo" by the ice.

That she had not heard from Alan was beginning to recur to Constance
with strange insistence. He must have left the boats by now, unless he
had found work on one of those few which ran through the winter.

He and his occupation, instead of slipping from her thoughts with time,
absorbed her more and more. Soon after he had gone to Manitowoc and he
had written that he had discovered nothing, she had gone to the office
of the Petoskey paper and, looking