n
session, Foster was recalled.

Through it all Tisdale waited, listening to everything, separating,
weighing each point presented. It was beginning to look serious for
Foster. Clearly, in his determination to win his suit, the prosecution was
losing sight of the simple justice the Government desired. And a man less
dramatic, less choleric, with less of a reputation for political intrigue
than Miles Feversham might better have defended Stuart Foster. Foster was
so frank, so honest, so eager to make the Alaska situation understood. And
it was not an isolated case; there were hundreds of young men, who, like
him, had cast their fortunes with that new and growing country, to find
themselves, after years of hardship and privation of which the outside
world had no conception, bound hand and foot in an intricate tangle of the
Government's red tape.

The evening of the fourth day the attorney for the prosecution surprised
Tisdale at his rooms. "Thank you," he said, when Hollis offered his
armchair, "but those windows open to the four winds of heaven are a little
imprudent to a man who lives by his voice. Pretty, though, isn't it?" He
paused a moment to look down on the harbor lights and the chains of
electric globes stretching off to Queen Anne hill and far and away to
Magnolia bluff, then seated himself between the screen and the table that
held the shaded reading lamp. "Has it occurred to you, Mr. Tisdale," he
asked, "that a question may be raised as to the legality of your testimony
in these coal cases?"

"No." Hollis remained standing. He looked at his visitor in surprise.
"Please make that clear, Mr. Bromley," he said.

The attorney smiled. "This is a trial case," he began. "A dozen others
hinge on it. I was warned to be prepared for anything; so, when my
attention was called to that article in _Sampson's Magazine_, my
suspicions were instantly awake. It looked much like blackmail and, in
connection with another story I heard in circulation at Washington, seemed
a systematic preparation to attack the Government's witness. Possibly you
do not know it was Mr. Jerold, your legal adviser and my personal friend,
who put me in touch with the magazine. You had wired him to find out
certain facts, but he was unable to go to New York at the time and,
knowing I was there for the week, he got into communication with me by
telephone and asked me to look the matter up. The publishers, fearing a
libel suit which would ruin them, we