neither were they fictions. They--their
incidents, at least--were actualities. They were woven from the lives
of those upon Corvet's list! Alan felt his skin prickling and the
blood beating fast in his temples. How could Burr have known these
incidents? Who could he be to know them all? To what man, but one,
could all of them be known? Was old Burr ... Benjamin Corvet?

Alan could give no certain answer to that question. He could not find
any definite resemblance in Burr's placid face to the picture of Corvet
which Constance had shown him. Yet, as regarded his age and his
physical characteristics, there was nothing to make his identity with
Benjamin Corvet impossible. Sherrill or others who had known Benjamin
Corvet well, might be able to find resemblances which Alan could not.
And, whether Burr was or was not Corvet, he was undeniably some one to
whom the particulars of Corvet's life were known.

Alan telegraphed that day to Sherrill; but when the message had gone
doubt seized him. He awaited eagerly the coming of whoever Sherrill
might send and the revelations regarding Corvet which might come then;
but at the same time he shrunk from that revelation. He himself had
become, he knew, wholly of the lakes now; his life, whatever his future
might be, would be concerned with them. Yet he was not of them in the
way he would have wished to be; he was no more than a common seaman.

Benjamin Corvet, when he went away, had tried to leave his place and
power among lakemen to Alan; Alan, refusing to accept what Corvet had
left until Corvet's reason should be known, had felt obliged also to
refuse friendship with the Sherrills. When revelation came, would it
make possible Alan's acceptance of the place Corvet had prepared for
him, or would it leave him where he was? Would it bring him nearer to
Constance Sherrill, or would it set him forever away from her?

CHAPTER XVI

A GHOST SHIP

"Colder some to-night, Conrad."

"Yes, sir."

"Strait's freezing over, they say."

"Pretty stiff ice outside here already, sir."

The skipper glanced out and smiled confidently but without further
comment; yet he took occasion to go down and pass along the car deck
and observe the men who under direction of the mate were locking the
lugs under the car wheels, as the trains came on board. The wind,
which had risen with nightfall to a gale off the water, whipped snow
with it which swirled and back-eddied with the switch