As he had slept through the trainmen’s dinner hour, he was as hungry as a wolf, and he lost no time in seating himself in a warm corner of the low, log-ceilinged dining-room of the Little Saskatchewan.  Although a quarter of an hour early, he had hardly placed himself at his table when another person entered the room.  Casually he glanced up from the two letters which he had spread out before him.  The one who had followed him was a woman.  She had turned sharply upon seeing him and seated herself at the next table, her back so toward him that he caught only her half profile.

It was enough to assure him that she was young and pretty.  On her head she wore a turban of silver lynx fur, and about this she had drawn her glossy brown hair, which shone like burnished copper in the lamp-glow, and had gathered it in a bewitchingly coquettish knot low on her neck, where it shone with a new richness and a new warmth with every turn of her head.  But not once did she turn so that Philip could see more than the tantalizing pink of her cheek and the prettiness of her chin, which at times was partly concealed in a collarette of the same silver gray lynx fur.

He ate his supper almost mechanically, in spite of his hunger, for his mind was deep in the mysterious problem which confronted him.  Half a dozen times he broke in upon his thoughts to glance at the girl at the opposite table.  Once he was sure that she had been looking at him and that she had turned just in time to keep her face from him.  Philip admired pretty women, and of all beauty in woman he loved beautiful hair, so that more and more frequently his eyes traveled to the shining wealth of copper-colored tresses near him.  He had almost finished his supper when a movement at the other table drew his eyes up squarely, and his heart gave a sudden jump.  The girl had risen.  She was facing him, and as for an instant their eyes met she hesitated, as if she were on the point of speaking.  In that moment he recognized her.

It was the girl in the photograph, older, more beautiful—­the same soft, sweet contour of face, the same dark eyes that had looked at him in MacGregor’s office, filled with an indescribable sadness now, instead of the laughing joy of girlhood.  In another moment he would have responded to her hesitation, to the pathetic tremble of her lips, but before words could form themselves she had turned and was gone.  And yet at the door, even as she disappeared, he saw her face turned to him again, pleadingly, entreatingly, as if she knew his mission and sent to him a silent prayer for mercy.

Thrusting back his chair, he caught up his hat from a rack and followed.  He was in time to see her pass through the low door out into the night.  Without hesitation his mind had leaped to a definite purpose.  He would overtake her outside, introduce himself, and then perhaps he would understand the conflicting orders of Inspector MacGregor.