Phillips started.  His brain was fogged and he had difficulty in focusing his gaze upon the eager, upturned face of the girl; nevertheless, he appreciated the significance of this audacious inquiry and there came to him the memory of his recent conversation with the Countess Courteau.  “Why do you say that?” he queried, after a moment.  “Why do you want me to go?”

Laure’s eyes searched his; there was an odd light in them, and a peculiar intensity which he dimly felt but scarcely understood.  “I don’t know,” she confessed.  She was no longer smiling, and, although her gaze remained hypnotically fixed upon his, she seemed to be searching her own soul.  “I don’t know,” she said again, “but you have a—­call.”

In spite of this young woman’s charms, and they were numerous enough, Phillips was not strongly drawn to her; resentment, anger, his rankling sense of injury, all these left no room for other emotions.  That she was interested in him he still had sense enough to perceive; her amazing proposal, her unmistakable air of proprietorship, showed that much, and in consequence a sort of malicious triumph arose within him.  Here, right at hand, was an agency of forgetfulness, more potent by far than the one to which he had first turned.  Dangerous?  Yes.  But his life was ruined.  What difference, then, whether oblivion came from alcohol or from the drug of the poppy?  Deliberately he shut his ears to inner warnings; he raised his head defiantly.

“I’ll go,” said he.

“We leave at daylight,” Best told him.

CHAPTER XIV

With ’Poleon Doret to be busy was to be contented, and these were busy times for him.  His daily routine, with trap and gun, had made of him an early riser and had bred in him a habit of greeting the sun with a song.  It was no hardship for him, therefore, to cook his breakfast by candle-light, especially now that the days were growing short.  On the morning after his rescue of Sam Kirby and his daughter ’Poleon washed his dishes and cut his wood; then, finding that there was still an hour to spare before the light would be sufficient to run Miles Canon, he lit his pipe and strolled up to the village.  The ground was now white, for considerable snow had fallen during the night; the day promised to be extremely short and uncomfortable.  ’Poleon, however, was impervious to weather of any sort; his good humor was not dampened in the least.

Even at this hour the saloons were well patronized, for not only was the camp astir, but also the usual stale crowd of all-night loiterers was not yet sufficiently intoxicated to go to bed.  As ’Poleon neared the first resort, the door opened and a woman emerged.  She was silhouetted briefly against the illumination from within, and the pilot was surprised to recognize her as Rouletta Kirby.  He was upon the point of speaking to her when she collided blindly with a man who had preceded him by a step or two.