him to breathe the spirit of outdoors; and when he had finished he
incurred the wrath of those at home by burying himself for a whole year
with a surveying expedition in Central America.

It was this expedition that put the finishing touch to Philip Steele. He
came back a big hearted, clear minded young fellow, as bronzed as an
Aztec--a hater of cities and the hothouse varieties of pleasure to which
he had been born, and as far removed from anticipation of his father's
millions as though they had never been. He possessed a fortune in his
own right, but as yet he had found no use for the income that was piling
up. A second expedition, this time to Brazil, and then he came back--to
meet the girl of the hyacinth letter. And after that, after he had
broken from the bondage which held Moody, and Fordney, and Whittemore,
he went back to his many adventures.

It was the North that held him. In the unending desolations of snow and
forest and plain, between Hudson's Bay and the wild country of the
Athabasca, he found the few people and the mystery and romance which
carried him back, and linked him to the dust-covered generations he had
lost. One day a slender, athletically built young man enlisted at Regina
for service in the Northwest Mounted Police. Within six months he had
made several records for himself, and succeeded in having himself
detailed to service in the extreme North, where man-hunting became the
thrilling game of One against One in an empty and voiceless world. And
no one, not even the girl of the hyacinth letter, would have dreamed
that the man who was officially listed as "Private Phil Steele, of the
N.W.M.P.," was Philip Steele, millionaire and gentleman adventurer.

None appreciated the humor of this fact more than Steele himself, and he
fell again into his wholesome laugh as he placed a fresh pine log on the