heartstrings, and filled him with a warm glow that was new and strange
to him, and which was almost the happiness of these two. It swept from
him the sense of loneliness which had oppressed him a short time before,
and when at last, after they had talked for a long time beside the fire,
the colonel's wife lifted her pretty head drowsily and asked if she
might go to bed, he laughed in sheer joy at the pouting tenderness with
which she rubbed her pink cheek against the grizzled face above her, and
at the gentle light in the colonel's eyes as he half carried her into
the tent.

For a long time after he had rolled himself in his own blanket Philip
lay awake, wondering at the strangeness of this thing that had happened
to him. It was Her hair that he had seen shining this night under the
old spruce, lustrous and soft, and coiled in its simple glory, as he had
seen it last on the night when Chesbro had broken in on them at the
ball. It was very easy for him to imagine that it had been Her face,
with soul and heart and love added to its beauty. More than ever he knew
what had been missing for him now, and blessed Chesbro for his
blundering, and fell asleep to dream of the new face, and to awaken
hours later to the unpleasant realization that his visions were but
dream-fabric after all, and that the woman was the wife of Colonel
Becker.



Chapter III. A Skull And A Flirtation

It was late afternoon when they came into Lac Bain, and as soon as
Philip had turned over the colonel and his wife to Breed, he hurried to
his own cabin. At the door he encountered Buck Nome. The two men had not