early to report to father that he had no news of Uncle Benny; and father told him you were at the house and sent him over."
Alan was studying the coffee cup again, a queer expression on his face which she could not read.
"He was there when I woke up this morning, Miss Sherrill. I hadn't heard anybody in the house, but I saw a little table on wheels standing in the hall outside my door and a spirit lamp and a little coffee pot on it, and a man bending over it, warming the cup. His back was toward me, and he had straight black hair, so that at first I thought he was a Jap; but when he turned around, I saw he was an American Indian."
"Yes; that was Wassaquam."
"Is that his name? He told me it was Judah."
"Yes—Judah Wassaquam. He's a Chippewa from the north end of the lake. They're very religious there, most of the Indians at the foot of the lake; and many of them have a Biblical name which they use for a first name and use their Indian name for a last one."
"He called me 'Alan' and my father 'Ben.'"
"The Indians almost always call people by their first names."
"He said that he had always served 'Ben' his coffee that way before he got up, and so he had supposed he was to do the same by me; and also that, long ago, he used to be a deck hand on one of my father's ships."
"Yes; when Uncle Benny began to operate ships of his own, many of the ships on the lakes had Indians among the deck hands; some had all Indians for crews and white men only for officers. Wassaquam was on the first freighter Uncle Benny ever owned a share in; afterwards he came here to Chicago with Uncle Benny.
