an. Coming home late one afternoon toward the middle of
December, she dismissed the motor and stood gazing at the gulls. The
day was chill, gray; the air had the feel, and the voices of the gulls
had the sound to her, which precede the coming of a severe storm. The
gulls recalled sharply to her the day when Alan first had come to them,
and how she had been the one first to meet him and the child verse
which had told him that he too was of the lakes.

She went on into the house. A telegraph envelope addressed to her
father was on the table in the hall. A servant told her the message
had come an hour before, and that he had telephoned to Mr. Sherrill's
office, but Mr. Sherrill was not in. There was no reason for her
thinking that the message might be from Alan except his presence in her
thoughts, but she went at once to the telephone and called her father.
He was in now, and he directed her to open the message and read it to
him.

"Have some one," she read aloud; she choked in her excitement at what
came next--"Have some one who knew Mr. Corvet well enough to recognize
him, even if greatly changed, meet Carferry Number 25 Manitowoc
Wednesday this week. Alan Conrad."

Her heart was beating fast. "Are you there?" she said into the 'phone.

"Yes."

"Whom shall you send?"

There was an instant's silence. "I shall go myself," her father
answered.

She hung up the receiver. Had Alan found Uncle Benny? He had found,
apparently, someone whose semblance to the picture she had showed him
was marked enough to make him believe that person might be Benjamin
Corvet; or he had heard of some one who, from the account he had
received, he thought might be. She read again the words of the
telegram ... "even if greatly changed!" and she felt startling and
terrifying warning in that phrase.

CHAPTER XV

OLD BURR OF THE FERRY

It was in late November and while the coal carrier _Pontiac_, on which
he was serving as lookout, was in Lake Superior that Alan first heard
of Jim Burr. The name spoken among some other names in casual
conversation by a member of the crew, stirred and excited him; the name
James Burr, occurring on Benjamin Corvet's list, had borne opposite it
the legend "All disappeared; no trace," and Alan, whose investigations
had accounted for all others whom the list contained, had been able
regarding Burr only to verify the fact that at the address given no one
of this name was to be found.

He qu