those who had gone, and by
the echo of their voices crying to him from the water, Corvet had
wandered away; he had come back, under the name of one of those whom he
had wronged, to the lake life from which he had sprung. Only now and
then, for a few hours, he had intervals when he remembered all; in one
of these he had dug up the watch and the ring and other things which he
had taken from Captain Stafford's pockets and written to himself
directions of what to do with them, when his mind again failed.

And for Spearman, strong against all that assailed Corvet, there had
been always the terror of the Indian Drum--the Drum which had beat
short for the _Miwaka_, the Drum which had known that one was saved!
That story came from some hint which Luke had spread, Corvet thought;
but Spearman, born near by the Drum, believed that the Drum had known
and that the Drum had tried to tell; all through the years Spearman had
dreaded the Drum which had tried to betray him.

So it was by the Drum that, in the end, Spearman was broken.

The priest's voice had stopped, as Alan slowly realized; he heard
Sherrill's voice speaking to him.

"It was a trust that he left you, Alan; I thought it must be that--a
trust for those who suffered by the loss of your father's ship. I
don't know yet how it can be fulfilled; and we must think of that."

"That's how I understand it," Alan said.

Fuller consciousness of what Father Perron's story meant to him was
flowing through him now. Wrong, great wrong there had been, as he had
known there must be; but it had not been as he had feared, for he and
his had been among the wronged ones. The name--the new name that had
come to him--he knew what that must be: Robert Alan Stafford; and there
was no shadow on it. He was the son of an honest man and a good woman;
he was clean and free; free to think as he was thinking now of the girl
beside him; and to hope that she was thinking so of him.

Through the tumult in his soul he became aware of physical feelings
again, and of Sherrill's hand put upon his shoulder in a cordial,
friendly grasp. Then another hand, small and firm, touched his, and he
felt its warm, tightening grasp upon his fingers; he looked up, and his
eyes filled and hers, he saw, were brimming too.

They walked together, later in the day, up the hill to the small, white
house which had been Caleb Stafford's. Alan had seen the house before
but, not knowing then whether the man who had