"I have forgotten them."
But the colonel raised his strong forefinger and shook his head, smiling.
"No, no, Donnegan. If you deny it, I shall know that you are harboring the most undying grudge against me. As a matter of fact, I have just had an interview with Lord Nick, and the cursed fellow put my nerves on edge."
The colonel made a wry face.
"And when you came, I saw no manner in which you could possibly thwart him."
His eyes grew wistful.
"Between friends—as a son to his future father," he said softly, "can't you tell me what the charm was that you used on. Nick to send him away? I watched him come out of the shack. He was in a fury. I could see that by the way his head thrust out between his big shoulders. And when he went down the hill he was striding like a giant, but every now and then he would stop short, and his head would go up as if he were tempted to turn around and go back, but didn't quite have the nerve. Donnegan, tell me the trick of it?"
"Willingly. I appealed to his gambling instinct."
"Which leaves me as much in the dark as ever."
But Donnegan smiled in his own peculiar and mirthless manner and he went on to the hut. Not that he expected a cheery greeting from Lou Macon, but he was drawn by the same perverse instinct which tempts a man to throw himself from a great height. At the door he paused a moment. He could distinguish no words, but he caught the murmur of Lou's voice as she talked to Jack Landis, and it had that infinitely gentle quality which only a woman's voice can have, and only when she nurses the sick. It was a pleasant torture to Donnegan to hear it. At length he summoned his resolution and tapped at the door.