If Isobel Becker had merely written him a line or two, a note exculpating herself of what her father had already explained away, he would still have thought that a world lay between them.

But, in place of that, she had sent him the faded flowers, with their golden thread! For many minutes he paced back and forth across his narrow room, and never had a room looked more like a prison cell to him than this one did now.

He was filled with but one impulse, and that was to return to Lac Bain, to humble himself at the feet of the woman he loved, and ask her forgiveness for the heinous thing he had done.

He wanted to tell her that he had driven Bucky Nome into outlawry, that he had fought for her, and run away himself--because he loved her.

It was Sergeant Moody's voice, vibrant with the rasping unpleasantness of a file, that jarred him back into his practical self.