has happened to him. When I
tell you about him now, it is in the hope that, in that way, I may
awake some forgotten memory of him in you; if not that, you may
discover some coincidences of dates or events in Corvet's life with
dates or events in your own. Will you tell me frankly, if you do
discover anything like that?"

"Yes; certainly."

Alan leaned forward in the big chair, hands clasped between his knees,
his blood tingling sharply in his face and fingertips. So Sherrill
expected to make him remember Corvet! There was strange excitement in
this, and he waited eagerly for Sherrill to begin. For several
moments, Sherrill paced up and down before the fire; then he returned
to his place before the mantel.

"I first met Benjamin Corvet," he commenced, "nearly thirty years ago.
I had come West for the first time the year before; I was about your
own age and had been graduated from college only a short time, and a
business opening had offered itself here.

"There was a sentimental reason--I think I must call it that--as well,
for my coming to Chicago. Until my generation, the property of our
family had always been largely--and generally exclusively--in ships.
It is a Salem family; a Sherrill was a sea-captain, living in Salem,
they say, when his neighbors--and he, I suppose--hanged witches; we had
privateers in 1812 and our clippers went round the Horn in '49. The
_Alabama_ ended our ships in '63, as it ended practically the rest of
the American shipping on the Atlantic; and in '73, when our part of the
_Alabama_ claims was paid us, my mother put it in bonds waiting for me
to grow up.

"Sentiment, when I came of age, made me want to put this money back
into ships flying the American flag; but there was small chance of
putting it--and keeping it, with profit--in American ships on the sea.
In Boston and New York, I had seen the foreign flags on the deep-water
ships--British, German, French, Norwegian, Swedish, and Greek; our flag
flew mostly on ferries and excursion steamers. But times were booming
on the great lakes. Chicago, which had more than recovered from the
fire, was doubling its population every decade; Cleveland, Duluth, and
Milwaukee were leaping up as ports. Men were growing millions of
bushels of grain which they couldn't ship except by lake; hundreds of
thousands of tons of ore had to go by water; and there were tens of
millions of feet of pine and hardwood from the Michigan forests.
Sailing v