uldn't do her any good--but you might--another. I'm going
to send you to her, M'sieur. You're a terrible lesson, and I may be a
beast; but you're preaching a powerful sermon, and I guess--perhaps--you
may do her good. I'll tell her your story, old man, and the story of the
woman who made you so nice and white and clean. Perhaps she'll see the
moral, M'sieur. Eh? Perhaps!"

For a long time he wrote, and when he had done he sealed the writing,
put the envelope and the skull together in a box, and tied the whole
with babiche string. On the outside he fastened another note to Breed,
the factor, in which he explained that he and Bucky Nome had found
it necessary to leave that very night for the West. And he heavily
underscored the lines in which he directed the factor to see that the
box was delivered to Mrs. Colonel Becker, and that, as he valued the
honor and the friendship of the service, and especially of Philip
Steele, all knowledge of it should be kept from the colonel himself.

It was eight o'clock when he went out into the night with his pack upon
his back. He grunted approval when he found it was snowing, for the
track of himself and Nome would be covered. Through the thickening gloom
the two or three lights in the factor's home gleamed like distant stars.
One of them was brighter than the others, and he knew that it came from
the rooms which Breed had fitted up for the colonel and his wife. As
Philip halted for a moment, his eyes drawn by a haunting fascination to
that window, the light grew clearer and brighter, and he fancied that he
saw a face looking out into the night--toward his cabin. A moment later
he knew that it was the woman's face. Then a door opened, and a figure
hurried across the open. He stepped back into the gloom of his own cabin
and waited. It was the colonel. Three times he knocked loudly at the
cabin door.

"I'd like to go out and shake his hand," muttered Steele. "I'd like to
tell him that he isn't the only man who's had an idol broken, and that
Mrs. B.'s little flirtation isn't a circumstance--to what might have
happened."

Instead, he moved silently away, and turned his face into the thin trail
that buried itself in the black forests of the West.

Chapter IV. The Silken Scarf

A loneliness deeper than he had ever known--a yearning that was almost
pain, oppressed Philip as he left Lac Bain behind him. Half a mile from
the post he stopped under a shelter of dense spruce, and stood li