yarn purposely to head us off?"

"That's the way it seemed to me afterwards. He spun it out, you know; it
lasted to Bremerton, where I got off. But it was interesting; the best I
ever heard, and I took it all down, word for word. It was little use,
though. The chief gave one look at my bunch of copy and warned me, for the
last time, the paper wasn't publishing any novels. What I had gone aboard
the _Aquila_ for was to write up her equipment and, incidentally, to pick
up Hollis Tisdale's views on Alaska coal."

They had reached the entrance to the Morganstein box; the orchestra was
playing again, the curtain began to rise on the second act, and Daniels
hurried back to his place. But during the next intermission, an usher
brought the young reporter a note. It was written concisely on a business
card, but Jimmie read it through slowly a second time before he handed it
to the Society Editor.

"Mrs. Feversham wants to see that story," so it ran. "Leave it at my
office in the morning. She may take it east with her. Knows some magazine
people who are going to feature Alaska and the Northwest."

After a thoughtful moment Miss Atkins returned the card to Jimmie. "Is it
the Indian story?" she asked.

Daniels nodded, watching her face. His smouldering excitement was ready to
flame. "They will read it for Mrs. Feversham,"--Geraldine's voice trembled
slightly--"and they will take it. It's a magazine story. They ought to pay
you handsomely. It's the best thing you ever wrote."

Marcia Feversham saw possibilities in that story. Indeed, writing Jimmie
from Washington, she called it a little masterpiece. There was no doubt it
would be accepted somewhere, though he must expect to see it cut down
considerably, it was so long. Then, presumably to facilitate the placing
of the manuscript, she herself went over it with exceeding care, revising
with her pencil, eliminating whole paragraphs, and finally fixing the end
short of several pages. In the copy which her husband's stenographer
prepared, the original was reduced fully a third. After that it mellowed
for an interval in Marcia's drawer.

At the close of November, it was announced that Stuart Foster, the junior
defendant in the first "Conspiracy to defraud the Government" trial, was
weather-bound in Alaska. This, taken in consideration with the serious
illness of Tisdale, on whom the prosecution relied for technical
testimony, resulted in setting the case for hearing the last week