It was always very easy to learn to love the Old Colonel. On the particular late June night in question the Colonel looked his usual best in correctly tailored dinner clothes, possessing only one note of individuality, the black bow, obviously factory-tied, set at his collar at a rather startling angle. “Gaylord,” he said suddenly. “I’d like a few words with you. Bring your glass over to my chair.” The young man thus addressed had been one of a gay group across the lounging room, and they all looked up with interest. It was a remembered fact that when the Colonel spoke in that tone of voice it was well to listen closely. Gaylord himself smiled and came at once toward him. The group went on with their talk. The club lights showed the young man plainly, yet he did not in the least stand out. In fact, at first glance there was very little to distinguish him from most of the other men of his age that frequented the club rooms. It was not until two weeks later, when his great adventure had actually begun, and when the camp-robber studied him from the tree limb, that his real personality stood forth. Of course it was by light of contrast. In these luxurious rooms he was among his own kind: in those far mountains he was a stranger and an alien. He was a familiar type: rather boyish, kind-hearted as are most men who have lived sheltered lives, a fair athlete and a good sportsman at the poker table. It was enough; most of his young friends were wholly satisfied with him, and except perhaps for a vague, troubled hour—usually late at night—Hugh Gaylord was wholly satisfied with himself. And perhaps the reason why the blood mounted higher in his cheeks as the Colonel summoned him was his realization that the old man had had sterner training, and that he possessed X-ray eyes that could read straight into a man. In the first place the Colonel had amassed a fortune by his own resistless effort. In the second, he had known the great school of the forest. He was a sportsman whose metal had been tried and proven on the game trails of two continents. His eyes leaped over Hugh’s face, and he wondered if he had undertaken a vain task. He knew that a steel-worker cannot make tempered blades out of inferior metal. He wondered if he could hope for any real response from the treatment he was about to suggest. Hugh looked soft, and soft men are not usually made hard by a few weeks in the mountains. To follow the high trails, to seek the hidden people, to scale the cliffs and wade the marsh require a certain hardihood of spirit to start with,—and Hugh Gaylord seemed lacking in that trait. It was not that he had a weakling’s body. Because it was the thing to do in his own circle he had kept himself fit on the gym-floor of his athletic club. His hands were hard and brown, his figure lithe, his face and neck were tanned in tennis court and golf links.