Her hand linked itself quickly through his arm.

"Please don't," she entreated. "It is kind of you, and you are just the
sort of man I should expect to resent a thing like that. But it would be
absurd to notice it. Don't you think so?"

In spite of her effort to speak calmly, there was a tremble in her
voice, and Alan was puzzled at the quickness with which the color went
from her face, leaving it strangely white.

"I am at your service," he replied with a rather cold inclination of his
head. "But if you were my sister, Miss Standish, I would not allow
anything like that to go unchallenged."

He watched the stranger until he disappeared through a door out upon the
deck.

"One of John Graham's men," he said. "A fellow named Rossland, going up
to get a final grip on the salmon fishing, I understand. They'll choke
the life out of it in another two years. Funny what this filthy stuff we
call money can do, isn't it? Two winters ago I saw whole Indian villages
starving, and women and little children dying by the score because of
this John Graham's money. Over-fishing did it, you understand. If you
could have seen some of those poor little devils, just skin and bones,
crying for a rag to eat--"

Her hand clutched at his arm. "How could John Graham--do that?" she
whispered.