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 listening
as there came to him faintly the distant howling of a dog. After all,
had he done right? He laughed harshly and his hands clenched as he
thought of Bucky Nome. He had done right by him. But the skull--Mrs.
Becker--was that right? Like a flash there came to him out of the
darkness a picture of the scene beside the fire--of Mrs. Becker and the
colonel, of the woman's golden head resting on her husband's shoulder,
her sweet blue eyes filled with all the truth and glory of womanhood as