"Yes."
"Then that is where they hear the Drum."
"Yes, Alan."
"My father took newspapers from those places, did he not?"
Wassaquam looked over the addresses again. "Yes; from all. He took them for the shipping news, he said. And sometimes he cut pieces out of them—these pieces, I see now; and afterward I burned the papers; he would not let me only throw them away."
"That's all you know about them, Judah?"
"Yes, Alan; that is all."
Alan dismissed the Indian, who, stolidly methodical in the midst of these events, went down-stairs and commenced to prepare a dinner which Alan knew he could not eat. Alan got up and moved about the rooms; he went back and looked over the lists and clippings once more; then he moved about again. How strange a picture of his father did these things call up to him! When he had thought of Benjamin Corvet before, it had been as Sherrill had described him, pursued by some thought he could not conquer, seeking relief in study, in correspondence with scientific societies, in anything which could engross him and shut out memory. But now he must think of him, not merely as one trying to forget; what had thwarted Corvet's life was not only in the past; it was something still going on. It had amazed Sherrill to learn that Corvet, for twenty years, had kept trace of Alan; but Corvet had kept trace in the same way and with the same secrecy of many other people—of about a score of people. When Alan thought of Corvet, alone here in his silent house, he must think of him as solicitous about these people; as seeking for their names in the newspapers which he took for that purpose, and as recording the changes in their lives. The deaths, the births, the marriages among these people had been of the intensest interest to Corvet.
It was possible that none of these people knew about Corvet; Alan had not known about him in Kansas, but had known only that some unknown person had sent money for his support. But he appreciated that it did not matter whether they knew about him or not; for at some point common to all of them, the lives of these people must have touched Corvet's life. When Alan knew what had been that point of contact, he would know about Corvet; he would know about himself.
Alan had seen among Corvet's books a set of charts of the Great Lakes. He went and got that now and an atlas. Opening them upon the table, he looked up the addresses given on Corvet's list. They were most of them, he found, towns about the northern end of the lake; a very few were upon other lakes—Superior and Huron—but most were upon or very close to Lake Michigan. These people lived by means of the lake; they got their sustenance from it, as Corvet had lived, and as Corvet had got his wealth. Alan was feeling like one who, bound, has been suddenly unloosed. From the time when, coming to see Corvet, he had found Corvet gone until now, he had felt the impossibility of explaining from anything he knew or seemed likely to learn the mystery which had surrounded himself and which had surrounded Corvet. But these names and addresses! They indeed offered something to go upon, though Luke now was forever still, and his pockets had told Alan nothing.