you--"

The rising frenzy of Lund's voice was suddenly broken by the clear note
of a girl's voice. One of two doors in the after-end of the main cabin
had opened, and she stood in the gap, slim, yellow-haired, with gray
eyes that blazed as they looked on the little tableau.

"Who says my father is a cur?" she demanded. "You?" And she faced Lund
with such intrepid challenge in her voice, such stinging contempt, that
the giant was silenced.

"I was dressing," she said, "or I would have come out before. If you say
my father deserted you, you lie!"

Captain Simms turned to her. Doctor Carlsen had risen and moved toward
her. Rainey wished he was on the dock. Here was a story breaking that
was a _saga_ of the North. He did not want to use it, somehow. The
girl's entrance, her vivid, sudden personality forbade that. He felt an
intruder as her eyes regarded him, standing by Lund's side in apparent
sympathy with him, arrayed against her father. And yet he was not
certain that Lund had not been betrayed. The remembrance of the first
look in the captain's face when he had glanced up from handling the gold
and seen Lund was too keen.

"Go into your cabin, Peggy," said the captain. "This is no place for
you. I can handle the matter. Lund has cause for excitement; but I can
satisfy him."

Lund stood frozen, like a pointer on scent, all his faculties united in
attention toward the girl. To Rainey he seemed attempting to visualize
her by sheer sense of hearing, by perceptions quickened in the blind.
The doctor crossed to the girl and spoke to her in a low voice.

Lund spoke, and his voice was suddenly mild.

"I didn't know there was a lady present, miss," he said. "Yore father's
right. You let us settle this. We'll come to an agreement."

But, for all his swift change to placability, there was a sinister
undertone to his voice that the girl seemed to recognize. She hesitated
until her father led her back into the cabin.

"You two'll sit down?" said the doctor, speaking aloud for the first
time, his voice amiable, carefully neutral. "And we'll have a drop of
something. Mr. Lund, I can understand your attitude. You've suffered a
great deal. But you have misunderstood Captain Simms. I have heard about
this from him, before. He has no desire to cheat you. He is rejoiced to
see you alive, though afflicted. He is still Honest Simms, Mr. Lund.

"I haven't your name, sir," he went on pleasantly, to Rainey. "The
captain said you we