Annie was perched on the cabin trunk, looking at Dick with laughing eyes. She enjoyed watching him, she liked his easy way of falling into the command of his schooner, she admired the muscles on his forearm (for he had rolled up his sleeves). He caught her glance. “Want to take her, Annie?”
“Oh, yes, Dick. Will you let me?”
“If you want to.”
So Annie took the wheel. She stood there, a merry, graceful figure,—though Dick kept close by and reached out a steadying hand now and then,—while the schooner came about, headed for the long pier, ran up neatly into her berth, threw out her lines, and stopped, her voyage over.
[Note:—In the spring, when the ice broke up in the streams of Michigan, a party of lumbermen found what had been the body of a man lying in a shallow creek, deep in the forest. Particulars would be unpleasant. It is enough to say that they buried him there, being rough men and far from a coroner; and that on a water-soaked envelope in his pocket was found a name which, as nearly as anything, seemed to spell “Roche.” To the persons of this tale his end remained a mystery. It might be added that Beveridge found more difficulty than he had foreseen in weaving his net around Stenzenberger. In fact the special agent had failed, at last accounts, to disturb the serenity of the lumber dealer, in spite of the moral certainty that his share in the guilt was the largest of any. Perhaps his secret went to the bottom of Lake Michigan with Henry Smiley.—S.M.]
