kanagan laughed again, and the canoe stopped amidst the ice when the
paddle fell from his hand.

"It's a good deal less of us than there was when we started out," he
said.

CHAPTER XXII

MISS DERINGHAM DECIDES

It was a clear winter day, when a big side-wheel steamer bound for way
ports down the Sound lay at the wharf at Vancouver waiting for the
mail. Towering white in the sunshine high above the translucent brine,
she looked with her huge wheel-casings, lines of winking windows, and
triple tier of decks more like a hotel set afloat than a steamer, and
the resemblance was completed by the long tables set out for breakfast
in the white and gold saloon. No swarm of voracious passengers had,
however, descended upon them as yet, for though winter touches the
southern coast but lightly, it is occasionally almost Arctic amidst the
ranges of the mountain province, and the Pacific express was held up
somewhere by the snow.

Bright though the sunshine was, a bitter wind came down across the
inlet from the gleaming hills that stretched back, ridged here and
there by the sombre green of pines, towards the frozen North, and
Deringham and his daughter, who were setting out on a visit to a town
of Washington, had sought shelter in the saloon. Alice Deringham
leaned back in a corner, a very dainty picture in her clinging furs,
with the ivory whiteness of the panelling behind her. Her father sat
close by, with a face that was slightly puckered, and thoughtful eyes,
turning over a packet of letters that had reached him from England the
day before, and his daughter fancied that their contents by no means
pleased him. There were a few of her passengers in the saloon, and one
couple attracted her languid attention.

She could see the man plainly, and he was one of the usual type of
Western citizen, keen-eyed, quick and nervous of movement and gesture,
and incisive of speech. He had a bundle of papers before him, and
appeared to be making calculations in pencil while he dictated to his
companion. Now and then she caught disjointed fragments of his
conversation.

"Got that quite straight? Fall in securities, silver depreciating.
Now did I put in anything about the Democrats going in?"

Miss Deringham could make but little of this, and had always cherished
a faint contempt, which she may have inherited from her mother, who had
been born at Carnaby, for anything connected with business. Still, she
was mildly interest