Moody came in.

“What in blazes are you locked up for?” he demanded, his keen little eyes scrutinizing Philip’s feverish face.  “Afraid somebody’ll walk in and steal you, Phil?”

“Headache,” said Philip, patting a hand to his head.  “One of the kind that makes you think your brain must be a hard ball bumping around inside your skull.”

The sergeant laid his hand on Philip’s arm.

“Go take a walk, Phil,” he said, in a softer voice.  “It will do you good.  I just came in to tell you the news.  They’ve got track of DeBar again, up near Lac la Biche.  But we can talk about that later.  Go take a walk.”

“Thanks for the suggestion,” said Philip.  “I believe I’ll do it.”

He passed beyond the barracks, and hit the sleigh-worn road that led out of town, walking faster and faster, as his brain began working.  He would return to Lac Bain.  That was settled in his mind without argument.  Nothing could hold him back after what he had received that afternoon.  If the letter and the violet message had come to him from the end of the earth it would have made no difference; his determination would have been the same.  He would return to Lac Bain—­but how?  That was the question which puzzled him.  He still had thirteen months of service ahead of him.  He was not in line for a furlough.  It would take at least three months of official red tape to purchase his discharge.  These facts rose like barriers in his way.  It occurred to him that he might confide in MacGregor, and that the inspector would make an opportunity for him to return into the north immediately.  MacGregor had the power to do that, and he believed that he would do it.  But he hesitated to accept this last alternative.

And then, all at once.  Sergeant Moody’s words came back to him—­“They’ve got track of DeBar again, up near Lac la Biche.”  The idea that burst upon him with the recalling of those words stopped Philip suddenly, and he turned back toward the barracks.  He had heard a great deal about DeBar, the cleverest criminal in all the northland, and whom no man or combination of men had been clever enough to catch.  And now this man was near Lac la Biche, in the Churchill and Lac Bain country.  It he could get permission from MacGregor to go after DeBar his own difficulty would be settled in the easiest possible way.  The assignment would take him for a long and indefinite time into the north.  It would take him back to Isobel Becker.

He went immediately to his room upon reaching the barracks, and wrote out his request to MacGregor.  He sent it over to headquarters by a rookie.  After that he waited.

Not until the following morning did Moody bring him a summons to appear in MacGregor’s office.  Five minutes later the inspector greeted him with outstretched hand, gave him a grip that made his fingers snap, and locked the office door.  He was holding Philip’s communication when the young man entered.