States. There's so
many Government buildings to put up and harbors and rivers to dredge, it
can't even afford to give us a few lights and charts, and ships keep on
feeling their way and going to destruction on the Alaska coast. Alaska is
side-tracked. She's been left standing so long she's going to rust."

"If some of our senators could listen to you," said the stranger, with a
swift and vanishing smile, "their eyes would be opened. But that is the
trouble; Alaska has had no voice. It is true each congressman has been so
burdened with the wants of his own State that session after session has
closed before the Alaska bills were reached. We have been accustomed to
look on Alaska as a bleak and forbidding country, with a floating
population of adventurers and lawless men, who go there with the intention
to stay only long enough to reap a mineral harvest. If she had other great
resources and such citizens as you, why were you not in Washington to
exploit her?"

Lucky Banks shook his head. "Up to this year," he said and smiled grimly,
"I couldn't have made the trip without beating my way, and I guess if I
went to some of those senators now and escaped being put down for an
ex-convict, they'd say I was engineering a trust. They'd turn another key
on Alaska to keep me out."

He wheeled to tramp down the lobby, then stopped. Annabel had entered.
Annabel arrayed in a new, imported tailored suit of excellent cloth, in a
shade of Copenhagen blue, and a chic hat of blue beaver trimmed with
paradise. Instantly the mining man's indignation cooled. He put aside
Alaska's wrongs and hurried, beaming, to meet his wife. "Why, you bought
blue," he said with pleased surprise. "And you can wear it, my, yes, about
as well as pink."

Annabel smiled with the little ironical curl of the lip that showed
plainly her good sense held her steady, on the crest of that high wave
whereon it had been fortune's freak to raise her. "Lucile showed me a
place, on the next floor of the store, where I could get the tan taken off
my face while I was waiting for alterations to my suit. They did it with a
sort of cold cream and hot water. There's just a streak left around my
neck, and I can cover that with the necklace." She paused then added with
a gentle conciliation creeping through her confidential tone: "I am going
to wear the pink chiffon to-night to hear Tarquina. Lucile says it's all
right for a box party, opening night. I like her real well. I asked h