Alan made no comment for a moment. Constance had seen the blood flush to his face and then leave it, and her own pulse had beat as swiftly as she rehearsed the superstition. As he gazed at her and then away, it was plain that he had heard something additional about the Miwaka—something which he was trying to fit into what she told him.
"That's all anybody knows?" His gaze came back to her at last.
"Yes; why did you ask about it—the Miwaka? I mean, how did you hear about it so you wanted to know?"
He considered an instant before replying. "I encountered a reference to the Miwaka—I supposed it must be a ship—in my father's house last night."
His manner, as he looked down at his coffee cup, toying with it, prevented her then from asking more; he seemed to know that she wished to press it, and he looked up quickly.
"I met my servant—my father's servant—this morning," he said.
"Yes; he got back this morning. He came here early to report to father that he had no news of Uncle Benny; and father told him you were at the house and sent him over."
Alan was studying the coffee cup again, a queer expression on his face which she could not read.
"He was there when I woke up this morning, Miss Sherrill. I hadn't heard anybody in the house, but I saw a little table on wheels standing in the hall outside my door and a spirit lamp and a little coffee pot on it, and a man bending over it, warming the cup. His back was toward me, and he had straight black hair, so that at first I thought he was a Jap; but when he turned around, I saw he was an American Indian."
"Yes; that was Wassaquam."