"Not yet, Alan—to St. Ignace. Father Perron—the priest, you know—went to St. Ignace as soon as he recovered from his exposure. He sent word to me that he wished to see me at my convenience; I told him that we would go to him as soon as you were able."
"He sent no other word than that?"
"Only that he had a very grave communication to make to us."
Alan did not ask more; at mention of Father Perron he had seemed to feel himself once more among the crashing, charging freight cars on the ferry and to see Benjamin Corvet, pinned amid the wreckage and speaking into the ear of the priest.
Father Perron, walking up and down upon the docks close to the railway station at St. Ignace, where the tracks end without bumper or blocking of any kind above the waters of the lake, was watching south directly across the Straits. It was mid-afternoon and the ice-crusher Ste. Marie, which had been expected at St. Ignace about this time, was still some four miles out. During the storm of the week before, the floes had jammed into that narrow neck between the great lakes of Michigan and Huron until, men said, the Straits were ice-filled to the bottom; but the Ste. Marie and the St. Ignace had plied steadily back and forth.
Through a stretch where the ice-crusher now was the floes had changed position, or new ice was blocking the channel; for the Ste. Marie, having stopped, was backing; now her funnels shot forth fresh smoke, and she charged ahead. The priest clenched his hands as the steamer met the shock and her third propeller—the one beneath her bow—sucked the water out from under the floe and left it without support; she met the ice barrier, crashed some of it aside; she broke through, recoiled, halted, charged, climbed up the ice and broke through again. As she drew nearer now in her approach, the priest walked back toward the railway station.
It was not merely a confessional which Father Perron had taken from the lips of the dying man on Number 25; it was an accusation of crime against another man as well; and the confession and accusation both had been made, not only to gain forgiveness from God, but to right terrible wrongs. If the confession left some things unexplained, it did not lack confirmation; the priest had learned enough to be certain that it was no hallucination of madness. He had been charged definitely to repeat what had been told him to the persons he was now going to meet; so he watched expectantly as the Ste. Marie made its landing. A train of freight cars was upon the ferry, but a single passenger coach was among them, and the switching engine brought this off first. A tall, handsome man whom Father Perron thought must be the Mr. Sherrill with whom he had communicated appeared upon the car platform; the young man from Number 25 followed him, and the two helped down a young and beautiful girl.
They recognized the priest by his dress and came toward him at once.
"Mr. Sherrill?" Father Perron inquired.
Sherrill assented, taking the priest's hand and introducing his daughter.