Alan choked as he put down the little porcupine quill box which had started this line of inquiry. Whatever questions he had asked of Judah or of Sherrill these last few days had brought him very quickly back to her. Moved by some intuitive certainty regarding Spearman, she had come north; she had not thought of peril to herself; she had struggled alone across dangerous ice in storm—a girl brought up as she had been! She had found him—Alan—with life almost extinct upon the beach; she and the Indian woman, Wassaquam had just said, had brought him along the shore. How had they managed that, he wondered; they had somehow got him to this house which, in his ignorance of exactly where he was upon the mainland, he had thought must be Wassaquam's; she had gone to get help— His throat closed up, and his eyes filled as he thought of this.
In the week during which he had been cared for here, Alan had not seen Constance; but there had been a peculiar and exciting alteration in Sherrill's manner toward him, he had felt; it was something more than merely liking for him that Sherrill had showed, and Sherrill had spoken of her to him as Constance, not, as he had called her always before, "Miss Sherrill" or "my daughter." Alan had had dreams which had seemed impossible of fulfilment, of dedicating his life and all that he could make of it to her; now Sherrill's manner had brought to him something like awe, as of something quite incredible.
When he had believed that disgrace was his—disgrace because he was Benjamin Corvet's son—he had hidden, or tried to hide, his feeling toward her; he knew now that he was not Corvet's son; Spearman had shot his father, Corvet had said. But he could not be certain yet who his father was or what revelation regarding himself might now be given. Could he dare to betray that he was thinking of Constance as—as he could not keep from thinking? He dared not without daring to dream that Sherrill's manner meant that she could care for him; and that he could not presume. What she had undergone for him—her venture alone up the beach and that dreadful contest which had taken place between her and Spearman—must remain circumstances which he had learned but from which he could not yet take conclusions.
He turned to the Indian.
"Has anything more been heard of Spearman, Judah?"
"Only this, Alan; he crossed the Straits the next day upon the ferry there. In Mackinaw City he bought liquor at a bar and took it with him; he asked there about trains into the northwest. He has gone, leaving all he had. What else could he do?"
Alan crossed the little cabin and looked out the window over the snow-covered slope, where the bright sun was shining. It was very still without; there was no motion at all in the pines toward the ice-bound shore; and the shadow of the wood smoke rising from the cabin chimney made almost a straight line across the snow. Snow had covered any tracks that there had been upon the beach where those who had been in the boat with him had been found dead. He had known that this must be; he had believed them beyond aid when he had tried for the shore to summon help for them and for himself. The other boat, which had carried survivors of the wreck, blown farther to the south, had been able to gain the shore of North Fox Island; and as these men had not been so long exposed before they were brought to shelter, four men lived. Sherrill had told him their names; they were the mate, the assistant engineer, a deckhand and Father Perron, the priest who had been a passenger but who had stayed with the crew till the last. Benjamin Corvet had perished in the wreckage of the cars.
As Alan went back to his chair, the Indian watched him and seemed not displeased.
"You feel good now, Alan?" Wassaquam asked.
"Almost like myself, Judah."