s he saw
her. The sled halted and, as she approached, he stepped down. Their
eyes encountered, and hers looked away; a sudden shyness, which sent
his heart leaping, had come over her. He wanted to speak to her, to
make some recognition to her of what she had done, but he did not dare
to trust his voice; and she seemed to understand that. He turned to
Sherrill instead. An engine and tender coupled to a single car stood
at the railway station.

"We're going to Chicago?" he inquired of Sherrill.

"Not yet, Alan--to St. Ignace. Father Perron--the priest, you
know--went to St. Ignace as soon as he recovered from his exposure. He
sent word to me that he wished to see me at my convenience; I told him
that we would go to him as soon as you were able."

"He sent no other word than that?"

"Only that he had a very grave communication to make to us."

Alan did not ask more; at mention of Father Perron he had seemed to
feel himself once more among the crashing, charging freight cars on the
ferry and to see Benjamin Corvet, pinned amid the wreckage and speaking
into the ear of the priest.

Father Perron, walking up and down upon the docks close to the railway
station at St. Ignace, where the tracks end without bumper or blocking
of any kind above the waters of the lake, was watching south directly
across the Straits. It was mid-afternoon and the ice-crusher _Ste.
Marie_, which had been expected at St. Ignace about this time, was
still some four miles out. During the storm of the week before, the
floes had jammed into that narrow neck between the great lakes of
Michigan and Huron until, men said, the Straits were ice-filled to the
bottom; but the _Ste. Marie_ and the _St. Ignace_ had plied steadily
back and forth.

Through a stretch where the ice-crusher now was the floes had changed
position, or new ice was blocking the channel; for the _Ste. Marie_,
having stopped, was backing; now her funnels shot forth fresh smoke,
and she charged ahead. The priest clenched his hands as the steamer
met the shock and her third propeller--the one beneath her bow--sucked
the water out from under the floe and left it without support; she met
the ice barrier, crashed some of it aside; she broke through, recoiled,
halted, charged, climbed up the ice and broke through again. As she
drew nearer now in her approach, the priest walked back toward the
railway station.

It was not merely a confessional which Father Perron had taken fro