“She couldn’t have missed a word.  We had found a bench behind the Kodiak skin, and she sat straight as a soldier, listening through it all.  I couldn’t get her to come away; it was as though she was looking on at an interesting play.  She was just as neutral and still; only her face turned white, and her eyes were wide as stars, and once she gripped the fur of the Kodiak so hard I expected to see it come down.  But I know she failed to grasp the vital point of the story.  I mean the point vital to her.  She doesn’t understand enough about law.  And I myself slept on it the night through before I saw.  It came the moment I wakened this morning, clear and sudden as an electric flash.  If David Weatherbee was mentally unbalanced when he made that transfer, the last half interest in the Aurora mine ought to revert to her.”

Feversham started.  He lifted his plump hands and let them drop forcibly on his broad knees.  But she did not notice his surprise.  They were approaching the station, and time pressed.  “You know it is not a simple infatuation with Frederic,” she hurried on, “to be forgotten tomorrow.  He has loved her passionately from the day he first met her, four years ago.  He can’t think of anything else; he never will do anything of credit to the family until she is his wife.  And now, with David Weatherbee safely buried, it seems reasonably sure.  Still, still, Miles, this unexpected fortune held out to her just now might turn the scales.  We have got to keep it from her, and if those coal claims are coming up for trial, you must frame some excuse to have them postponed.”

“Postponed?  Why, we’ve just succeeded in gaining Federal attention.  We’ve been waiting five years.  We want them settled now.  It concerns Frederic as well as the rest of us.”

“True,” she answered, “even more.  If those patents are allowed, he will take immediate steps to mine the coal on a large scale.  And it came over me, instantly, on the heels of the first flash, that it was inevitable, if Mr. Tisdale had taken advantage of David Weatherbee’s condition—­and his own story shows the man had lost his mind; he was wandering around planting make-believe orchards in the snow—­you would use the point to impeach the Government’s star witness.”

“Impeach the Government’s witness?” repeated Feversham, then a sudden intelligence leaped into his face.  “Impeach Hollis Tisdale,” he added softly and laughed.

Presently, as the chauffeur slackened speed, looking for a stand among the waiting machines at the depot, the attorney said:  “If the syndicate sends Stuart Foster north to the Iditarod, he may be forced to winter there; that would certainly postpone the trial until spring.”

The next moment the chauffeur threw open the limousine door, and the delegate stepped out; but he lingered a little over his good-by, retaining his wife’s hand, which he continued to shake slowly, while his eyes telegraphed an answer to the question in hers.  Then, laughing again deeply, he said:  “My lady!  My lady!  Nature juggled; she played your brother Frederic a trick when she set that mind in your woman’s head.”