grandfather's mills in the lower peninsula before he went up across the Straits. Lost his fingers then; has only half his fingers on his right hand. Why?"
Ethel sat back in her chair, playing nervously with her coffee spoon and gazing down. She had supposed herself prepared to discover that the statements in Huston Adley's astonishing letter had substance; nevertheless the completeness of this verification upset her. There was not only a James Quinlan who had been associated with her grandfather; but he had possessed a Robert, very dear to him, who recently had died; and James Quinlan's knowledge of Lucas Cullen went back to the epoch of the cut of the white pine in the lower peninsula,—the years of the tall trees, mentioned by her grandmother, when other men were burning the timber and slashing it, and doing everything to get it out of the way, and Lucas Cullen had arrived in Michigan, a young man, and turned the trees into gold.
"I came back here because—" Ethel began, looking steadily at her cousin. "The trouble I had with grandfather at St. Florentin, Ben," she made another start, "was over a man whom Kincheloe killed on Resurrection Rock."
"What?" Bennet said, leaning forward and staring at her as though he had not heard aright. "What did you say?"
"Kincheloe killed a man on Resurrection Rock—in the house there, Ben—day before yesterday; or during the night."
Verification of the existence of a James Quinlan and of a Robert on the other side of the veil had restored Ethel's confidence in her convictions of what had happened at St. Florentin; yet she realized that since
