in that tearoom or in that whole building knew what four long blasts meant when they were blown as they were now, or what the siren meant that answered. But now, as he listened to the blasts which seemed to have grown more desperate, this profoundly affected Corvet. He moved once to stop one of the couples coming from the tearoom. They hesitated, as he stared at them; then, when they had passed him, they glanced back. Corvet shook himself together and went on. 

 He continued to go north. He had not seemed, in the beginning, to have made conscious choice of this direction; but now he was following it purposely. He stopped once at a shop which sold men's things to make a telephone call. He asked for Miss Sherrill when the number answered; but he did not wish to speak to her, he said; he wanted merely to be sure she would be there if he stopped in to see her in half an hour. Then—north again. He crossed the bridge. Now, fifteen minutes later, he came in sight of the lake once more. 

 Great houses, the Sherrill house among them, here face the Drive, the bridle path, the strip of park, and the wide stone esplanade which edges the lake. Corvet crossed to this esplanade. It was an ice-bank now; hummocks of snow and ice higher than a man's head shut off view of the floes tossing and crashing as far out as the blizzard let one see; but, dislodged and shaken by the buffeting of the floe, they let the gray water swell up from underneath and wash around his feet as he went on. He did not stop at the Sherrill house or look toward it, but went on fully a quarter of a mile beyond it; then he came back, and with an oddly strained and queer expression and attitude, he stood staring out into the lake. He could not hear the distress signals now. 

 Suddenly he turned. Constance Sherrill, seeing him from a window of her home, had caught a cape about her and run out to him. 

 "Uncle Benny!" she hailed him with the affectionate name she had used with her father's partner since she was a baby.  "Uncle Benny, aren't you coming in?" 

 "Yes," he said vaguely.  "Yes, of course."  He made no move but remained staring at her.  "Connie!" he exclaimed suddenly, with strange reproach to himself in his tone.  "Connie! Dear little Connie!" 

 "Why?" she asked him.  "Uncle Benny, what's the matter?" 

 He seemed to catch himself together.  "There was a ship out there in trouble," he said in a quite different tone.  "They aren't blowing any 

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