"That might save us, Steele. Will you do it?"

"With pleasure."

Philip was conscious of an increasing warmth in his face as he bent over
his plate. "You're sure--they're elderly people?" he asked.

"That is what MacVeigh wrote me from Churchill; at least he said the
colonel was an old man."

"And his wife?"

"Has got her nerve," growled Breed irreverently. "It wouldn't be so bad
if it was only the colonel. But an old woman--ugh! What he doesn't think
of she'll remind him of, you can depend on that."

Steele thought of his mother, who looked at things through a magnifying
lorgnette, and laughed a little cheerlessly.

"I'll go out and meet them, anyway," he comforted. "Have Jack fix me up
for the hike in the morning, Breed. I'll start after breakfast."

He was glad when supper was over and he was back in his own cabin
smoking his pipe. It was almost with a feeling of shame that he took the
golden hair from his wallet and held it once more so that it shone
before his eyes in the firelight.

"You're crazy, Phil Steele," he assured himself. "You're an unalloyed
idiot. What the deuce has Colonel Becker's wife got to do with you--even
if she has golden hair and uses cream-tinted paper soaked in hyacinth?