Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/119

Rh you do your own stretching?' That meant serving from the stove to the table, usually."

He was silent for a few moments; when he looked at her across the table again, he seemed about to speak seriously. His gaze left her face and then came back.

"Miss Sherrill," he said gravely, "what is, or was, the Miwaka? A ship?"

He made no attempt to put the question casually; rather, he had made it more evident that it was of concern to him by the change in his manner.

"The Miwaka?" Constance said.

"Do you know what it was?"

"Yes; I know; and it was a ship."

"You mean it doesn't exist any more?"

"No; it was lost a long time ago."

"On the lakes here?"

"On Lake Michigan."

"You mean by lost that it was sunk?"

"It was sunk, of course; but no one knows what happened to it—whether it was wrecked or burned or merely foundered."

The thought of the unknown fate of the ship and crew—of the ship which had sailed and never reached port and of which nothing ever had been heard but the beating of the Indian drum—set her blood tingling as it had done before, when she had been told about the ship, or when she had told others about it and the superstition connected with it. It was plain Alan Conrad had not asked about it idly; something about the Miwaka had come to him recently and had excited his intense concern.

"Whose ship was it?" he asked. "My father's?"

"No; it belonged to Stafford and Ramsdell. They