“And honorable men—men you can trust and believe in?”
“Yes.”
“It is odd,” she said, with a trembling little laugh that was like a bird-note in her throat. “I have never seen Alaska before, and yet something about these mountains makes me feel that I have known them a long time ago. I seem to feel they are welcoming me and that I am going home. Alan Holt is a fortunate man. I should like to be an Alaskan.”
“And you are—”
“An American,” she finished for him, a sudden, swift irony in her voice. “A poor product out of the melting-pot, Captain Rifle. I am going north—to learn.”
“Only that, Miss Standish?”
His question, quietly spoken and without emphasis, demanded an answer. His kindly face, seamed by the suns and winds of many years at sea, was filled with honest anxiety as she turned to look straight into his eyes.
“I must press the question,” he said. “As the captain of this ship, and as a father, it is my duty. Is there not something you would like to tell me—in confidence, if you will have it so?”
For an instant she hesitated, then slowly she shook her head. “There is nothing, Captain Rifle.”
“And yet—you came aboard very strangely,” he urged. “You will recall that it was most unusual—without reservation, without baggage—”