“But,” resumed Feversham quickly, “I shall make a stiff fight at Washington; I shall force attention to our suspended land laws; demand the rights the United States allows her western territories; I shall ask for the same concessions that were the making of the Oregon country; and first and last I shall do all I can to loosen the strangling clutch of Conservation.”  He paused, while his hand fell still more heavily on the table, and the glasses jingled anew.  “And, gentlemen, the day of the floating population is practically over; we have our settled communities, our cities; we are ready for a legislative body of our own; the time has come for Home Rule.  But the men who make our laws must be familiar with the country, have allied interests.  Gentlemen,”—­his voice, dropping its aggressive tone, took a honeyed insistence,—­“we want in our first executive a man who knows us intimately, who has covered our vast distances, whose vision has broadened; a man big enough to hold the welfare of all Alaska at heart.”

The delegate finished this period with an all-embracing smile and, nodding gently, leaned back again in his chair.  But in the brief silence that followed, he experienced a kind of shock.  Foster, the best known mining engineer from Prince William Sound to the Tanana, had turned his eyes on Tisdale; and Banks, Lucky Banks, who had made the rich strike in the Iditarod wilderness, also looked that way.  Then instantly their thought was telegraphed from face to face.  When Feversham allowed his glance to follow the rest, it struck him as a second shock that Tisdale was the only one on whom the significance of the moment was lost.

The interval passed.  Tisdale stirred, and his glance, coming back from the door, rested on a dish that had been placed before him.  “Japanese pheasant!” he exclaimed.  The mellowness glowed in his face.  He lifted his eyes, and the delegate, meeting that clear, direct gaze, dropped his own to his plate.  “Think of it!  Game from the other side of the Pacific.  They look all right, but—­do you know?”—­the lines deepened humorously at the corners of his mouth—­“nothing with wings ever seems quite as fine to me as ptarmigan.”

“Ptarmigan!” Feversham suspended his fork in astonishment.  “Not ptarmigan?”

“Yes,” persisted Tisdale gently, “ptarmigan; and particularly the ones that nest in Nunatak Arm.”

There was a pause, while for the first time his eyes swept the Circle.  He still held the attention of every one, but with a difference; the tenseness had given place to a pleased expectancy.

Then Foster said:  “That must have been on some trip you made, while you were doing geological work around St. Elias.”