Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/248

230 "Jo Papo."

She shook her head. "No; I don't know him."

She had drawn him a little away from the crowd about the meeting. His blood was beating hard with recognition of her manner toward him. Whatever he was, whatever the disgrace might be that his father had left to him, she was still resolute to share in it. He had known she would be so. She found a spot where the moss was covered with dry pine needles and sat down upon the ground.

"Sit down," she invited; "I want you to tell me what you have been doing."

"I've been on the boats." He dropped down upon the moss beside her. "It's a—wonderful business, Miss Sherrill; I'll never be able to go away from the water again. I've been working rather hard at my new profession—studying it, I mean. Until yesterday I was a not very highly honored member of the crew of the package freighter Oscoda; I left her at Frankfort and came up here."

"Is Wassaquam with you?"

"He wasn't on the Oscoda; but he was with me at first. Now, I believe, he has gone back to his own people—to Middle Village."

"You mean you've been looking for Mr. Corvet in that way?"

"Not exactly that." He hesitated; but he could see no reason for not telling what he had been doing. He had not so much hidden from her and her father what he had found in Benjamin Corvet's house; rather, he had refrained from mentioning it in his notes to them when he left Chicago because he had thought that the lists would lead to an immediate explanation; they had