s straight ahead when he
met a girl or a woman. Never had he believed fully and utterly in the
angelhood of the feminine until now. He passed perhaps a dozen on the
way to barracks, and he was overwhelmed with the desire to stop and
feast his eyes upon each one of them. He had never been a lover of
women; he admired them, he believed them to be the better part of man,
he had worshiped his mother, but his heart had been neither glorified
nor broken by a passion for the opposite sex. Now, to the bottom of his
soul, he worshiped that dozen! Some of them were homely, some of them
were plain, two or three of them were pretty, but to Keith their
present physical qualifications made no difference. They were white
women, and they were glorious, every one of them! The plainest of them
was lovely. He wanted to throw up his hat and shout in sheer joy. Four
years--and now he was back in angel land! For a space he forgot
McDowell.

His head was in a whirl when he came to barracks. Life was good, after
all. It was worth fighting for, and he was bound fight. He went
straight to McDowell's office. A moment after his knock on the door the
Inspector's secretary appeared.

"The Inspector is busy, sir," he said in response to Keith's inquiry.
"I'll tell him--"

"That I am here on a very important matter," advised Keith. "He will
admit me when you tell him that I bring information regarding a certain
John Keith."

The secretary disappeared through an inner door. It seemed not more
than ten seconds before he was back. "The Inspector will see you, sir."

Keith drew a deep breath to quiet the violent beating of his heart. In
spite of all his courage he felt upon him the clutch of a cold and
foreboding hand, a hand that seemed struggling to drag him back. And
again he heard Conniston's dying voice whispering to him, "REMEMBER,
OLD CHAP, YOU WIN OR LOSE THE MOMENT MCDOWELL FIRST SETS HIS EYES ON
YOU!"

Was Conniston right?

Win or lose, he would play the game as the Englishman would have played
it. Squaring his shoulders he entered to face McDowell, the cleverest
man-hunter in the Northwest.

V

Keith's first vision, as he entered the office of the Inspector of
Police, was not of McDowell, but of a girl. She sat directly facing him
as he advanced through the door, the light from a window throwing into
strong relief her face and hair. The effect was unusual. She was
strikingly handsome. The sun, giving to the room a soft radi