.

A Face Out Of The Night.
Steele came up to the Hudson's Bay Company's post at Lac Bain on the seventh day after the big storm, and Breed, the factor, confided two important bits of information to him while he was thawing out before the big box-stove in the company's deserted and supply-stripped store.
The first was that a certain Colonel Becker and his wife had left Fort Churchill, on Hudson's Bay, to make a visit at Lac Bain; the second, that Buck Nome had gone westward a week before and had not returned.
Breed was worried, not over Nome's prolonged absence, but over the anticipated arrival of the other two.

According to the letter which had come to him from the Churchill factor.

Colonel Becker and his wife had come over on the last supply ship from London, and the colonel was a high official in the company's service.

Also, he was an old gentleman.
Ostensibly he had no business at Lac Bain, but was merely on a vacation, and wished to see a bit of real life in the wilderness.
Breed's grizzled face was miserable.
"Why don't they send 'em down to York Factory or Nelson House ?" he demanded of Steele.