t think of
your views?"

Tisdale laughed softly. "He heard most of them before I left Washington,
and this is what he thinks."

As he spoke, he took a letter from the table which he gave to Foster. It
bore the official stamp and was an appointment to that position which
Miles Feversham had so confidently hoped, with Marcia's aid, to secure.

"Well, that shows the President's good judgment!" Foster exclaimed and
held out his hand. "You are the one man broad enough to fit the place."
After a moment he said, "But it is going to leave you little time to
devote to your own affairs. How about the Aurora?"

Tisdale did not reply directly. He rose and walked the length of the
floor. "That depends," he said and stopped with his hands in his pockets
to regard Foster with the upward, appraising look from under knitting
brows. "I presume, Stuart, you are through with the syndicate?"

Foster colored. "I put in my resignation as mining engineer of the company
shortly after I came out, at the beginning of the year."

"And while you were in the interior," pursued Tisdale, "you were sent to
the Aurora to make a report. What did you think of the mine?"

"I thought Frederic Morganstein would be safe in bonding the property if
he could interest you in selling; it looked better to me than even Banks'
strike in the Iditarod. This season's clean-up should justify Weatherbee."

"You mean in staying on at the risk of his reason and life?"

Foster nodded; a shadow crossed his open face. "I mean everything but--his
neglect to make final provision for his wife."

Tisdale frowned. "There is where you make your mistake. Weatherbee
persisted as he did, in the face of defeat, for her sake."

Foster laughed mirthlessly. "The proofs are otherwise. Look at things,
once, from her side," he broke out. "Think what it means to her to see you
realizing, from a few hundred dollars you could easily spare, this big
fortune. I know you've been generous, but after all, of what benefit to
her is a bequest in your will, when now she has absolutely nothing but
that hole in the Columbia desert? Face it, be reasonable; you always have
been in every way but this. I don't see how you can be so hard, knowing
her now as you do."

Tisdale turned to the window. "I have not been as hard as you think," he
said. "But it was necessary, in order to carry out Weatherbee's plans, to--
do as I did."

"That's the trouble." Foster rose from his chair and went a few steps