himself; a great reader--wholly self-educated; he had, I think, many of
the attributes of a great man--at least, they were those of a man who
should have become great; he had imagination and vision. His whole
thought and effort, at that time, were absorbed in furthering and
developing the traffic on the lakes, and not at all from mere desire
for personal success. I met him for the first time one day when I went
to his office on some business. He had just opened an office at that
time in one of the old ramshackle rows along the river front; there was
nothing at all pretentious about it--the contrary, in fact; but as I
went in and waited with the others who were there to see him, I had the
sense of being in the ante-room of a great man. I do not mean there
was any idiotic pomp or lackyism or red tape about it; I mean that the
others who were waiting to see him, and who knew him, were keyed up by
the anticipation and keyed me up....

"I saw as much as I could of him after that, and our friendship became
very close.

"In 1892, when I married and took my residence here on the lake
shore--the house stood where this one stands now--Corvet bought the
house on Astor Street. His only reason for doing it was, I believe,
his desire to be near me. The neighborhood was what they call
fashionable; neither Corvet nor Mrs. Corvet--he had married in
1889--had social ambitions of that sort. Mrs. Corvet came from
Detroit; she was of good family there--a strain of French blood in the
family; she was a schoolteacher when he married her, and she had made a
wonderful wife for him--a good woman, a woman of very high ideals; it
was great grief to both of them that they had no children.

"Between 1886, when I first met him, and 1895, Corvet laid the
foundation of great success; his boats seemed lucky, men liked to work
for him, and he got the best skippers and crews. A Corvet captain
boasted of it and, if he had had bad luck on another line, believed his
luck changed when he took a Corvet ship; cargoes in Corvet bottoms
somehow always reached port; there was a saying that in storm a Corvet
ship never asked help; it gave it; certainly in twenty years no Corvet
ship had suffered serious disaster. Corvet was not yet rich, but
unless accident or undue competition intervened, he was certain to
become so. Then something happened."

Sherrill looked away at evident loss how to describe it.

"To the ships?" Alan asked him.

"No; to him.