"I was a constable in those days," went on the superintendent—"a swaggering youngster in a proud uniform. The girl was so pretty you felt breathless just from looking at her. I can see her even now, without half trying, as she used to sit near me at camp fires that have been cold for forty years.
"Her father was wanted for a border robbery," the colonel resumed as Dexter sat silent, watching the flames, "and she was supposed to have helped him. My inspector sent me after them, and I rounded them up in a corner of Northern Ontario.
"During the weeks of the back trip," Devreaux pursued, "that girl worked on me with those innocent eyes of hers, and I soon found myself trying to think that we had made a dreadful mistake. And because I wanted to, I soon was thinking so. I got so I would have staked my life on that girl. She told me she was guiltless, and begged me to let her go." The old officer's jaw muscles hardened as he smiled his granite smile, "Now you're the only man besides myself who knows how near a police constable once came to betraying his trust.
"Do you know what saved me, corporal? My uniform was too tight in the back." Devreaux nodded soberly. "Nothing but that. I couldn't move or breathe without remembering the tunic I wore. In my moments of weakening that tunic somehow would tug at my back. I believed in that girl, but also I passionately believed in the Royal North-West Mounted Police. And so I escorted my prisoners to the fort, and my heart was breaking when the inspector returned my salute and told me that some day I might make a good policeman.
"As it turned out," Devreaux added, and deliberately refrained from looking at his companion, "this girl was all wrong—thoroughly no account—not worth wasting a thought on. Yet I think about her sometimes, because it was through her that I lost a lot of fine boyish illusions. And there was another thing I almost lost, but didn't quite: the thing that generations of us will go on to the last man and the last breath fighting for: the honor of the service."
A deep silence settled in the cavern as the superintendent broke off his low, monotones of speech. Dexter sat quietly, his spare body hunched over the fire, gazing into vacancy. But at length he stirred on his log, and abruptly turned, and squarely met his officer's eyes. "You didn't need to tell me this," he said.
"The one romance of my life," remarked the colonel, his voice tinged with something akin to embarrassment. "I just happened to be reminded of it."
"A homily for young policemen." Dexter laughed harshly, and then suddenly stood up, and from his pocket he produced a dog-eared newspaper clipping. "This fell from among your papers," he said. "Have you ever read it?"
"I have a scrapbook at the fort in which I file away items of general police interest," observed Devreaux. "I must have clipped this before I left the fort, and lacked the time to paste it up."
While Dexter held the candle near, he ran his glance through the paragraph of type.