Presently, when all were well forward with coffee and cigars, Haddon rapped loudly on the table as he rose. A change came over the entire personnel of the assemblage. Here but now had been a riotous meeting of full-blooded men, young men, middle-aged men, gray-haired men, bent on nothing better than drinking and eating. But now anyone who glanced down these tables would have seen a steady keenness, a fixity of purpose, on the face of practically every man present. They were hard-headed American business men on the instant now, each man ready for the purpose which really had brought him here. Money—the pursuit of money—the keen zest of the game of business—that was the real intoxication of these men, and not that of alcohol. They listened now in perfect silence to what their representative might have to say. Haddon told them briefly something of his late trip into the Cumberlands, told why it had been ended so abruptly for a second time, admitted that he had never been over much of the Company’s land holdings, in the mountains, and explained the reasons why that was a difficult thing. He showed that it was necessary to have a guide to make a successful exploration of the properties in that country, and adverted to the benefits of direct testimony rather than hearsay, explaining how he had brought this mountaineer, who had spent all his life in the middle of the Company’s properties, to the city with him to tell them his own first-hand story of the land. A large map hung on the wall, and to this he adverted from time to time. Joslin’s eyes followed him. Yes, he knew these streams—he could locate this or that territory familiar to himself, here on the map. He knew on the ground what Haddon pointed out upon the map. So presently, when they called upon him to speak, he rose with no great diffidence on his own part. They greeted him with a generous round of applause, which startled him, for he had never heard anything of the sort. But after all David Joslin was a man of great dignity and self-respect, with great powers of mind as well as of body. And there lurked somewhere within him, as in so many of these strong characters of the hills, natural instincts of the orator.