the table, collected his service equipment and strapped it in his pack.
After that he returned to the table with a pad of paper and a pencil and
sat down. His face was strangely white as he took the skull in his
hands.

"I'll do it, so help me all the gods, I'll do it!" he breathed
excitedly. "M'sieur, a woman killed you---as much as Bucky Nome, a woman
did it. You couldn'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