Enoch nodded. Havisham shook hands heartily and departed, and the Secretary turned to his loaded desk. The Alaskan situation was causing him keen anxiety. The old war between private ownership, with all its greed and unfairness to the common citizen, and government control, with all its cumbersome and often inefficient methods, had reached acute proportions in the great northern province. Enoch was faced with the necessity of deciding between the two. It must be a long distance decision and any verdict he rendered was predestined to have in it elements of injustice. For days Enoch thrust, as far as possible, his personal problem into the background while he struggled with this greater one. It was only at night that the thought of Diana overwhelmed all else to torture him and yet to fill him with the joy of perfect memories. It was on the morning after he had given his Alaskan decision that Charley Abbott, eyebrows raised, laid a Brown paper before the Secretary, with the comment: "Either Cheney or some one in Cheney's office has leaked." It was a twisted story of Curly's death. Curly, according to this version, had been doing his utmost to keep two Survey men, Harden and Forrester, from hogging for obscure government purposes, certain oil lands, belonging to Curly. In the ill feeling that had resulted, Curly had been shot. Before his death, however, he had been able to write a statement of the affair which had been sent to a well-known lawyer in Washington. He also had left sufficient property to the lawyer to enable him to expose the workings of the Geological Survey to its bones. Enoch's face reddened. "I don't know what there is about a piece of work like this that gets under my skin so intolerably!" he exclaimed. "Whether it's the cruelty of it, or the dishonesty or the brute selfishness, I don't know. But we are going to answer this, Abbott." "How shall we go about it, sir? We might find out if Cheney knows these men personally and have him make a statement." "Have him tell of their previous records," said Enoch. "Let the world know the heroism and the self-sacrifice of those men. And at the end let him give the lie direct to the Brown papers. Tell him I'll sign it for him." "That will give Brown just the opening he's looking for, Mr. Secretary, I'm afraid," said Abbott, doubtfully. "I mean, your signature." "I'm ready for Brown," replied Enoch shortly. Still Charley hesitated. "What is it, Abbott?" asked the Secretary. "It's Miss Allen I'm thinking about," blurted out the younger man. "You've gone through the worst that they can hand to a man, so you've nothing more to fear. But if they bring her into it again, Mr. Secretary, I'll go crazy!" The veins stood up on Enoch's forehead, and he said, with a cold vehemence that made Abbott recoil, "If Miss Allen's name is brought up with mine in that manner again, I shall kill Brown."