e buildings on the river front. Burr's figure, vague in the
dusk, crossed the railroad yards and made its way to where a huge black
bulk, which Alan recognized as the ferry, loomed at the waterside. He
disappeared aboard it. Alan, following him, gazed about.

A long, broad, black boat the ferry was, almost four hundred feet to
the tall, bluff bow. Seen from the stem, the ship seemed only an
unusually rugged and powerful steam freighter; viewed from the beam,
the vessel appeared slightly short for its freeboard; only when
observed from the stern did its distinguishing peculiarity become
plain; for a few feet only above the water line, the stern was all cut
away, and the long, low cavern of the deck gleamed with rails upon
which the electric lights glinted. Save for the supports of the
superstructure and where the funnels and ventilator pipes passed up
from below, that whole strata of the ship was a vast car shed; its
tracks, running to the edge of the stern, touched tracks on the dock.
A freight engine was backing loaded cars from a train of sixteen cars
upon the rails on the starboard side; another train of sixteen big box
cars waited to go aboard on the tracks to the port of the center
stanchions. When the two trains were aboard, the great vessel--"No.
25," in big white stencil upon her black sides were her distinguishing
marks--would thrust out into the ice and gale for the Michigan shore
nearly eighty miles away.

Alan thrilled a little at his inspection of the ferry. He had not seen
close at hand before one of these great craft which, throughout the
winter, brave ice and storm after all--or nearly all--other lake boats
are tied up. He had not meant to apply there when he questioned old
Burr about a berth on the ferry; he had used that merely as a means of
getting into conversation with the old man. But now he meant to apply;
for it would enable him to find out more about old Burr.

He went forward between the tracks upon the deck to the companionway,
and ascended and found the skipper and presented his credentials. No
berth on the ferry was vacant yet but one soon would be, and Alan was
accepted in lieu of the man who was about to leave; his wages would not
begin until the other man left, but in the meantime he could remain
aboard the ferry if he wished. Alan elected to remain aboard. The
skipper called a man to assign quarters to Alan, and Alan, going with
the man, questioned him about Burr.

All th