With new life Pierrot went to a covered box nailed against one of the log walls and a moment later placed in Philip’s hands a long, white, silken neck-scarf.  Once more there rose to his nostrils the sweet, faint scent of hyacinth, and with a sudden low cry Philip crushed the dainty fabric in a mass to his face.  In that moment it seemed as though the sweetness of the woman herself was with him, stirring him at last to confess the truth—­the thing which he had fought against so fiercely in those few hours at Lac Bain; and the knowledge that he had surrendered to himself, that in going from Lac Bain he was leaving all that the world held for him in the way of woman and love, drew his breath from him in another broken, stifled cry.

When he lowered the scarf his face was white.  Pierrot was staring at him.

“It makes me think—­of home,” he explained lamely.  “Sometimes I get lonely, too.  There’s a girl—­down there—­who wears a scarf like this, and what she wears smells like a flower, just as this does—­”

“Oui, I understand,” said Pierrot softly.  “It is the way I feel when my Iowla is gone.”

He replaced the scarf in the box, and when he returned to the stove Philip explained why he had come to his cabin.  With Pierrot’s promise to accompany him with dogs and sledge on his patrol the next day he prepared to go to bed.  Pierrot also was undressing, and Philip said to him casually,

“This woman—­at Churchill—­Jacques—­what if some one should tell you that she is not so much of an angel after all—­that she is, perhaps, something like—­like the woman over at Lac la Biche, who ran away with the Englishman?”

Pierrot straightened as though Philip had thrust a knife-point into his back.  He broke forth suddenly into French.

“I would call him a liar, M’sieur,” he cried fiercely.  “I would call him a liar, once-twice—­three times, and then if he said it again I would fight him.  Mon Dieu, but it would be no sin to kill one with a mouth like that!”

Philip was conscious of the hot blood rushing to his face as he bent over his bunk.  The depths of Pierrot’s faith shamed him, and he crawled silently between the blankets and turned his face to the wall.  Pierrot extinguished the light, and a little later Philip could hear his deep breathing.  But sleep refused to close his own eyes, and he lay on his back, painfully awake.  In spite of the resolution he had made to think no more of the woman at Lac Bain, his mind swept him back to her irresistibly.  He recalled every incident that had occurred, every word that she had spoken, since he had first looked upon her beautiful face out on the Churchill trail.  He could find nothing but purity and sweetness until he came with her for that fatal hour or two into the company of Bucky Nome.  And then, again, his blood grew hot.  But—­after all—­was there not some little excuse for her?  He thought of the hundreds of women he had known, and wondered