"How old are you now?"
"Thirty, maybe."
"Did you ever hear of Benjamin Corvet?"
"Who?"
"Benjamin Corvet."
"No."
Alan turned to Constance; she had been listening intently, but she made no comment. "That is all, then," he said to Papo; "if I find out anything to your advantage, I'll let you know." He had aroused, he understood, expectations of benefit in these poor Indians. Something rose in Alan's throat and choked him. Those of whom Benjamin Corvet had so laboriously kept trace were, very many of them, of the sort of these Indians; that they had never heard of Benjamin Corvet was not more significant than that they were people of whose existence Benjamin Corvet could not have been expected to be aware. What conceivable bond could there have been between Alan's father and such poor people as these? Had his father wronged these people? Had he owed them something? This thought, which had been growing stronger with each succeeding step of Alan's investigations, chilled and horrified him now. Revolt against his father more active than ever before seized him, revolt stirring stronger with each recollection of his interviews with the people upon his list. As they walked away, Constance appreciated that he was feeling something deeply; she too was stirred.
"They all—all I have talked to—are like that," he said to her. "They all have lost some one upon the lakes."
In her feeling for him, she had laid her hand upon
