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 interested in the man’s companion, whose face she could not see.  The girl was dressed very plainly, and Miss Deringham decided that the fabric had not cost much to begin with and was by no means new.  It, however, set off a pretty, slender figure, and the girl had fine brown hair, while the little ungloved fingers on pencil were white and shapely.  Alice Deringham wondered with a languid curiosity what her face was like, and felt a half contemptuous pity for her.  She did not consider such an occupation fitting for a woman.

Then her attention was diverted as a boy with a satchel calling out “Colonist,” in a shrill nasal drawl, came in, and she vacantly watched a man who purchased a paper spread out the sheet.