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252 self try to, so long as it concerned Alan. Coming home late one afternoon toward the middle of December, she dismissed the motor and stood gazing at the gulls. The day was chill, gray; the air had the feel, and the voices of the gulls had the sound to her, which precede the coming of a severe storm. The gulls recalled sharply to her the day when Alan first had come to them, and how she had been the one first to meet him and the child verse which had told him that he too was of the lakes.

She went on into the house. A telegraph envelope addressed to her father was on the table in the hall. A servant told her the message had come an hour before, and that he had telephoned to Mr. Sherrill's office, but Mr. Sherrill was not in. There was no reason for her thinking that the message might be from Alan except his presence in her thoughts, but she went at once to the telephone and called her father. He was in now, and he directed her to open the message and read it to him.

"Have some one," she read aloud; she choked in her excitement at what came next—"Have some one who knew Mr. Corvet well enough to recognize him, even if greatly changed, meet Carferry Number 25 Manitowoc Wednesday this week. Alan Conrad."

Her heart was beating fast. "Are you there?" she said into the 'phone.

"Yes."

"Whom shall you send?"

There was an instant's silence. "I shall go myself," her father answered.

She hung up the receiver. Had Alan found Uncle Benny? He had found, apparently, someone whose re-