st and about men long dead.

Alan decided that there could be no better place to interview old Burr
than here; he waited therefore, and in the early evening the old man
came in.

Alan watched him curiously as, without speaking to any one, he went to
the chair recognized as his and sat down. He was a slender but
muscularly built man seeming about sixty-five, but he might be
considerably younger or older than that. His hair was completely
white; his nose was thin and sensitive; his face was smoothly placid,
emotionless, contented; his eyes were queerly clouded, deepset and
intent.

Those whose names Alan had found on Corvet's list had been of all ages,
young and old; but Burr might well have been a contemporary of Corvet
on the lakes. Alan moved over and took a seat beside the old man.

"You're from No. 25?" he asked, to draw him into conversation.

"Yes."

"I've been working on the carrier _Pontiac_ as lookout. She's on her
way to tie up at Cleveland, so I left her and came on here. You don't
know whether there's a chance for me to get a place through the winter
on No. 25?"

Old Burr reflected. "One of our boys has been talking of leaving. I
don't know when he expects to go. You might ask."

"Thank you; I will. My name's Conrad--Alan Conrad."

He saw no recognition of the name in Burr's reception of it; but he had
not expected that. None of those on Benjamin Corvet's list had had any
knowledge of Alan Conrad or had heard the name before.

Alan was silent, watching the old man; Burr, silent too, seemed
listening to the conversation which came to them from the tables near
by, where men were talking of cargoes, and of ships and of men who
worked and sailed upon them.

"How long have you been on the lakes?" Alan inquired.

"All my life." The question awakened reminiscence in the old man. "My
father had a farm. I didn't like farming. The schooners--they were
almost all schooners in those days--came in to load with lumber. When
I was nine years old, I ran away and got on board a schooner. I've
been at it, sail or steam, ever since."

"Do you remember the _Miwaka_?"

"The _Miwaka_?"

Old Burr turned abruptly and studied Alan with a slow scrutiny which
seemed to look him through and through; yet while his eyes remained
fixed on Alan suddenly they grew blank. He was not thinking now of
Alan, but had turned his thoughts within himself.

"I remember her--yes. She was lost in '95," he said. "I