Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/341

Rh Drum was telling that some on Ferry Number 25 were alive, and why he had hurried north because of that. The Drum—so superstition had said—had beat the roll of those who died with the Miwaka; had beaten for all but one! No one of those who accepted the superstition had ever been able to explain that; but Henry could! He knew something more about the Miwaka than others knew. He had encountered the Miwaka somehow or encountered some one saved from the Miwaka; he knew, then, that the Drum had beaten correctly for the Miwaka, that one was spared as the Drum had told! Who had that one been? Alan? And was he now among those for whom the Drum had not yet beat?

She recalled that, on the day when the Miwaka was lost, Henry and Uncle Benny had been upon the lake in a tug. Afterwards Uncle Benny had grown rich; Henry had attained advancement and wealth. Her reasoning had brought her to the verge of a terrible discovery. If she could take one more step forward in her thought, it would make her understand it all. But she could not yet take that step.

In the morning, at Traverse City—where she got a cup of coffee and some toast in the station eating house—she had to change to a day coach. It had grown still more bitterly cold; the wind which swept the long brick-paved platform of the station was arctic; and even through the double windows of the day coach she could feel its chill. The points of Grand Traverse Bay were frozen across; frozen across too was Torch Lake; to north of that, ice, snow-covered, through which frozen rushes protruded, marked the long chain of little lakes known as the "Intermediates." The little