There was another stir along the table, then Foster said:  “That was a great voice of Weatherbee’s.  I’ve seen it hearten a whole crowd on a mean trail, like the bugle and fife of a regiment.”

“So have I.”  It was Lucky Banks who spoke.  “So have I. And Weatherbee was always ready to stand by a poor devil in a tight place.  When the frost got me”—­he held up a crippled and withered hand—­“it was Dave Weatherbee who pulled me through.  We were mushing it on the same stampede from Fairbanks to Ruby Creek, and he never had seen me before.  It had come to the last day, and we were fighting it out in the teeth of a blizzard.  You all know what that means.  In the end we just kept the trail, following the hummocks.  Sometimes it was a pack under a drift, or maybe a sled; and sometimes it was a hand reaching up through the snow, frozen stiff.  Then it came my turn, and I lay down in my tracks.  But Weatherbee stopped to work over me.  He wouldn’t go on.  He said if I was determined to stay in that cemet’ry, I could count on his company.  And when he got me on my feet, he just started ‘Dixie,’ nice and lively, and the next I knew he had me all wound up and set going again, good as new.”

His laugh, like the treble notes of the Arctic wind, gave an edge to the story.

Presently Foster said:  “That was Weatherbee; I never knew another such man.  Always effacing himself when it came to a choice; always ready to share a good thing.  Why, he made some of his friends rich, and yet in the end, after seven years of it, seven years of struggle of the worst kind, what did he have to show?”

“Nothing, Foster; nothing but seven feet of earth up there on the edge of the wilderness.”  Tisdale’s voice vibrated gently; an emotion like the surface stir of shaken depths crossed his face.  “And a tract of unimproved desert down here in eastern Washington,” he added.

“And Mrs. Weatherbee,” supplemented Feversham quickly.  “You mustn’t forget her.  Any man must have counted such a wife his most valuable asset.  Here’s to her!  Young, charming, clever; a typical American beauty!” He stopped to drain his glass, then went on.  “I remember the day Weatherbee sailed for Alaska.  I was taking the same steamer, and she was on the dock, with all Seattle, to see the Argonauts away.  It was a hazardous journey into the Unknown in those days, and scenes were going on all around—­my own wife was weeping on my shoulder—­but Mrs. Weatherbee, and she had just been married then, bridged the parting like a little trump.  ‘Well, David,’ she said, with a smile to turn a priest’s head, ’good-by and good luck.  Come back when you’ve made your fortune, and I’ll help you to spend it.’”

The delegate, laughing deeply, reached for the port decanter to refill his glass.  No one else saw the humor of the story, though the man with the maimed hand again gave an edge to the silence that followed with his strained, mirthless laugh.  Presently he said:  “But he never came back.”