am not. All women are alike."

"Possibly--except in the way they dress their hair."

"You like mine?"

"Very much."

He was amazed at the admission, so much so that he puffed out a huge
cloud of smoke from his cigar in mental protest.

They had come to the smoking-room again. This was an innovation aboard
the _Nome_. There was no other like it in the Alaskan service, with its
luxurious space, its comfortable hospitality, and the observation parlor
built at one end for those ladies who cared to sit with their husbands
while they smoked their after-dinner cigars.

"If you want to hear about Alaska and see some of its human make-up,
let's go in," he suggested. "I know; of no better place. Are you afraid
of smoke?"

"No. If I were a man, I would smoke."

"Perhaps you do?"

"I do not. When I begin that, if you please, I shall bob my hair."

"Which would be a crime," he replied so earnestly that again he was
surprised at himself.

Two or three ladies, with their escorts, were in the parlor when they
entered. The huge main room, covering a third of the aft deck, was blue
with smoke. A score of men were playing cards at round tables. Twice as
many were gathered in groups, talking, while others walked aimlessly up
and down the carpeted floor. Here and there were men who sat alone. A
few were asleep, which made Alan look at his watch. Then he observed
Mary Standish studying the innumerable bundles of neatly rolled blankets
that lay about. One of them was at her feet. She touched it with
her toe.

"What do they mean?" she asked.

"We are overloaded," he explained. "Alaskan steam-ships have no steerage
passengers as we generally know them. It isn't poverty that rides
steerage when you go north. You can always find a millionaire or two on
the lower deck. When they get sleepy, most of the men you see in there
will unroll blankets and sleep on the floor. Did you ever see an earl?"

He felt it his duty to make explanations now that he had brought her in,
and directed her attention to the third table on their left. Three men
were seated at this table.

"The man facing us, the one with a flabby face and pale mustache, is an
earl--I forget his name," he said. "He doesn't look it, but he is a real
sport. He is going up to shoot Kadiak bears, and sleeps on the floor.
The group beyond them, at the fifth table, are Treadwell mining men,
and that fellow you see slouched against the wall, half asleep, with
whiskers nearly to