A tremor ran through her, and she remembered Alan.
She looked up at him, and he was puzzled. A weirdly
beautiful mystery lay in her eyes.
“I must go ashore here,” she said.
“I didn’t know I would find it so soon.
Please—”
With her hand touching his arm she turned. He
was looking at her and saw the strange light fade
swiftly out of her eyes. Following her glance
he saw Rossland standing half a dozen paces behind
them.
In another moment Mary Standish was facing the sea,
and again her hand was resting confidently in the
crook of Alan’s arm. “Did you ever
feel like killing a man, Mr. Holt?” she asked
with an icy little laugh.
“Yes,” he answered rather unexpectedly.
“And some day, if the right opportunity comes,
I am going to kill a certain man—the man
who murdered my father.”
She gave a little gasp of horror. “Your
father—was—murdered—”
“Indirectly—yes. It wasn’t
done with knife or gun, Miss Standish. Money
was the weapon. Somebody’s money. And
John Graham was the man who struck the blow.
Some day, if there is justice, I shall kill him.
And right now, if you will allow me to demand an explanation
of this man Rossland—”
“No.” Her hand tightened on
his arm. Then, slowly, she drew it away.
“I don’t want you to ask an explanation
of him,” she said. “If he should
make it, you would hate me. Tell me about Skagway,
Mr. Holt. That will be pleasanter.”
Not until early twilight came with the deep shadows
of the western mountains, and the Nome was
churning slowly back through the narrow water-trails
to the open Pacific, did the significance of that afternoon
fully impress itself upon Alan. For hours he had
surrendered himself to an impulse which he could not
understand, and which in ordinary moments he would
not have excused. He had taken Mary Standish ashore.
For two hours she had walked at his side, asking him
questions and listening to him as no other had ever
questioned him or listened to him before. He
had shown her Skagway. Between the mountains he
pictured the wind-racked canon where Skagway grew
from one tent to hundreds in a day, from hundreds
to thousands in a week; he visioned for her the old
days of romance, adventure, and death; he told her
of Soapy Smith and his gang of outlaws, and side by
side they stood over Soapy’s sunken grave as
the first somber shadows of the mountains grew upon
them.
But among it all, and through it all, she had asked
him about himself. And he had responded.
Until now he did not realize how much he had confided
in her. It seemed to him that the very soul of
this slim and beautiful girl who had walked at his
side had urged him on to the indiscretion of personal
confidence. He had seemed to feel her heart beating
with his own as he described his beloved land under
the Endicott Mountains, with its vast tundras, his
