essels such as the Sherrills had always operated, it is true,
had seen their day and were disappearing from the lakes; were being
'sold,' many of them, as the saying is, 'to the insurance companies' by
deliberate wrecking. Steamers were taking their place. Towing had
come in. The first of the whalebacks was built about that time, and we
began to see those processions of a barge and two, three, or four tows
which the lakemen called 'the sow and her pigs.' Men of all sorts had
come forward, of course, and, serving the situation more or less
accidentally, were making themselves rich.

"It was railroading which had brought me West; but I had brought with
me the _Alabama_ money to put into ships. I have called it sentiment,
but it was not merely that; I felt, young man though I was, that this
transportation matter was all one thing, and that in the end the
railroads would own the ships. I have never engaged very actively in
the operation of the ships; my daughter would like me to be more active
in it than I have been; but ever since, I have had money in lake
vessels. It was the year that I began that sort of investment that I
first met Corvet."

Alan looked up quickly. "Mr. Corvet was--?" he asked.

"Corvet was--is a lakeman," Sherrill said.

Alan sat motionless, as he recollected the strange exaltation that had
come to him when he saw the lake for the first time. Should he tell
Sherrill of that? He decided it was too vague, too indefinite to be
mentioned; no doubt any other man used only to the prairie might have
felt the same.

"He was a ship owner, then," he said.

"Yes; he was a shipowner--not, however, on a large scale at that time.
He had been a master, sailing ships which belonged to others; then he
had sailed one of his own. He was operating then, I believe, two
vessels; but with the boom times on the lakes, his interests were
beginning to expand. I met him frequently in the next few years, and
we became close friends."

Sherrill broke off and stared an instant down at the rug. Alan bent
forward; he made no interruption but only watched Sherrill attentively.

"It was one of the great advantages of the West, I think--and
particularly of Chicago at that time--that it gave opportunity for
friendships of that sort," Sherrill said. "Corvet was a man of a sort
I would have been far less likely ever to have known intimately in the
East. He was both what the lakes had made him and what he had made of