“Yes.  We ate dinner together, and the colonel said they were bound for Nelson House, and that they would probably go from there to Winnipeg.  I didn’t ask which way they would go.”

“From Nelson House it would be by the Saskatchewan and Le Pas trail,” cried Philip.  He was looking straight over the little doctor’s head.  “If it wasn’t for this damnable DeBar—­whom I ought to go after again—­”

“Drop DeBar,” interrupted McGill quietly.  “He’s got too big a start of you anyway—­so what’s the use?  Drop ’im.  I dropped a whole lot of things when I came up here.”

“But the law—­”

“Damn the law!” exploded the doctor with unexpected vehemence.  “Sometimes I think the world would be just as happy without it.”

Their eyes met, sharp and understanding.

“You’re a professor in a college,” chuckled Philip, his voice trembling again with hope and eagerness.  “You ought to know more than I do.  What would you do if you were in my place?”

“I’d hustle for a pair of wings and fly,” replied the little professor promptly.  “Good Lord, Phil—­if it was my wife—­and I hadn’t got her yet—­I wouldn’t let up until I’d chased her from one end of the earth to the other.  What’s a little matter of duty compared to that girl hustling toward Winnipeg?  Next to my own little girl at home she’s the prettiest thing I ever laid my eyes on.”

Philip laughed aloud.

“Thanks, McGill.  By Heaven, I’ll go!  When do you start?”

“The dogs are ready, and so is Mrs. William Falkner.”

Philip turned about quickly.

“I’ll go over and say good-by to the detachment, and get my pack,” he said over his shoulder.  “I’ll be back inside of half an hour.”

It was a slow trip down.  The snow was beginning to soften in the warmth of the first spring suns by the time they arrived at Lac la Crosse.  Two days before they reached the post at Montreal Lake, Philip began to feel the first discomfort of a strange sickness, of which he said nothing.  But the sharp eyes of the doctor detected that something was wrong, and before they came to Montreal House he recognized the fever that had begun to burn in Philip’s body.

“You’ve set too fast a pace,” he told him.  “It’s that—­and the blow you got when DeBar threw you against the rock.  You’ll have to lay up for a spell.”

In spite of his protestations, the doctor compelled him to go to bed when they arrived at the post.  He grew rapidly worse, and for five weeks the doctor and Falkner’s wife nursed him through the fever.  When they left for the South, late in May, he was still too weak to travel, and it was a month later before he presented himself, pale and haggard, before Inspector MacGregor at Prince Albert.  Again disappointment was awaiting him.  There had been delay in purchasing his discharge, and he found that he would have to wait until August.  MacGregor gave him a three weeks’ furlough, and his first move was to go