evening was over. In the short space of that evening she knew that she
had met one of the most despicable of blackguards in Nome, and one of
the noblest of men in you. And not until she saw on you the effect of
what she was doing did everything dawn fully upon her.

You know what happened. She left the table suddenly, overcome by shame
and terror. When I returned later, and told her that I could not find
you, it was impossible to comfort her. She lay in her bed crying all
that night. I am telling you all this, because to me my daughter is one
of the two most precious things on earth, the sweetest and purest little
girl that ever breathed. I can not describe to you the effect upon her
of the skull and the letter. Forgive us--forgive me. Some day we may
meet again,

Sylvester Becker.

Like one in a dream Philip picked up the torn envelope. Something
dropped from it upon the table--a tiny cluster of violets that had been
pressed and dried between the pages of a book, and when he took them in
his fingers, he found that their stems were tied with a single thread of
golden hair!

Chapter IX. Philip Takes Up The Trail

The letter--the flowers--that one shining golden hair, wound in a
glistening thread about their shriveled stems, seemed for a short space
to lift Philip Steele from out of the world he was in, to another in
which his mind was only vaguely conscious, stunned by this letter that
had come with the unexpectedness of a thunderbolt to change, in a single
instant, every current of life in his body. For a few moments he made no
effort to grasp the individual significance of the letter, the flowers,
the golden hair. One thought filled his brain--one great, overpowering
truth, which excluded everything else--and this was the realization that
the woman he loved was not Colonel Becker's wife. She was free. And for
him--Philip Steele--there was hope--hope--Suddenly it dawned upon him
what the flowers meant. The colonel had written the letter, and Isobel
had sent the faded violets, with their golden thread. It was her message
to him--a message without words, and yet with a deeper meaning for him
than words could have expressed. In a flood there rushed back upon him
all the old visions which he had fought against, and he saw her again in
the glow of the campfire, and on the trail, glorious in her beauty, his
ideal of all that a woman should be.

He rose to his feet and locked his door, fearing that some one might
en