Incredulity shot into Alan's eyes, and the humorous lines about his mouth vanished when he saw clearly that Stampede was not drawing upon his imagination.

Yet what he had told him seemed impossible.

Mary Standish had come aboard the _Nome_ a fugitive.
All her possessions she had brought with her in a small hand-bag, and these things she had left in her cabin when she leaped into the sea.
How, then, could she logically have had such a sum of money at Fairbanks as Stampede described?
Was it possible the Thlinkit Indian had also become her agent in transporting the money ashore on the night she played her desperate game by making the world believe she had died?
And was this money--possibly the manner in which she had secured it in Seattle--the cause of her flight and the clever scheme she had put into execution a little later?
He had been thinking crime, and his face grew hot at the sin of it.

It was like thinking it of another woman, who was dead, and whose name was cut under his father's in the old cottonwood tree.
Stampede, having gained his wind, was saying: "You don't seem interested, Alan.

But I'm going on, or I'll bust.