yet take that step.

In the morning, at Traverse City--where she got a cup of coffee and
some toast in the station eating house--she had to change to a day
coach. It had grown still more bitterly cold; the wind which swept the
long brick-paved platform of the station was arctic; and even through
the double windows of the day coach she could feel its chill. The
points of Grand Traverse Bay were frozen across; frozen across too was
Torch Lake; to north of that, ice, snow-covered, through which frozen
rushes protruded, marked the long chain of little lakes known as the
"Intermediates." The little towns and villages, and the rolling fields
with their leafless trees or blackened stumps, lay under drifts. It
had stopped snowing, however, and she found relief in that; searchers
upon the lake could see small boats now--if there were still small
boats to be seen.

To the people in her Pullman, the destruction of the ferry had been
only a news item competing for interest with other news on the front
pages of their newspapers; but to these people in the day coach, it was
an intimate and absorbing thing. They spoke by name of the crew as of
persons whom they knew. A white lifeboat, one man told her, had been
seen south of Beaver Island; another said there had been two boats.
They had been far off from shore, but, according to the report cabled
from Beaver, there had appeared to be men in them; the men--her
informant's voice hushed slightly--had not been rowing. Constance
shuddered. She had heard of things like that on the quick-freezing
fresh water of the lakes--small boats adrift crowded with men sitting
upright in them, ice-coated, frozen, lifeless!

Petoskey, with its great hotels closed and boarded up, and its curio
shops closed and locked, was blocked with snow. She went from the
train directly to the telegraph office. If Henry was in Petoskey, they
would know at that office where he could be found; he would be keeping
in touch with them. The operator in charge of the office knew her, and
his manner became still more deferential when she asked after Henry.

Mr. Spearman, the man said, had been at the office early in the day;
there had been no messages for him; he had left instructions that any
which came were to be forwarded to him through the men who, under his
direction, were patroling the shore for twenty miles north of Little
Traverse, watching for boats. The operator added to the report she had
heard upon