Hollis Tisdale, who had spent some of the hardest years of his Alaska
career in the service of the Government, met the delegate's look with a
quiet humor in his eyes.

"It seems to me," he said, and his deep, expressive voice instantly held
the attention of every one, "that such a man, with intelligence and
insight, of course, stands the surest chance of giving general
satisfaction in the end. He is at least disinterested, while the best of
us, no matter how big he is, how clear-visioned, is bound to take his own
district specially to heart. Prince William Sound alone has hundreds of
miles of coast-line and includes more than one fine harbor with an
ambitious seaport."

At this a smile rippled around the table, and Miles Feversham, who was the
attorney for one of the most ambitious syndicates of promoters in the
north, gave his attention to the menu. But Tisdale, having spoken, turned
his face to the open balcony door. His parka was thrown back, showing an
incongruous breadth of stiff white bosom, yet he was the only man present
who wore the garment with grace. In that moment the column of throat
rising from the purple folds, the upward, listening pose of the fine head,
in relief against the bearskin on the wall behind his chair, suggested a
Greek medallion. His brown hair, close-cut, waved at the temples; lines
were chiseled at the corners of his eyes and, with a lighter touch, about
his mouth; yet his face, his whole compact, muscular body, gave an
impression of youth--youth and power and the capacity for great endurance.
His friends said the north never had left a mark of its grip on Tisdale.
The life up there that had scarred, crippled, wrecked most of them seemed
only to have mellowed him.

"But," resumed Feversham quickly, "I shall make a stiff fight at