MK> I missed this in first reply to "MSGID: 2:280/5555 534abae8" but I MK> notice a <U+FEFF> (aka BOM) tucked in just after the REPLY kludge.
Yes, you got that right. I use Micro$oft's NOTEPAD as external editor for Golded and apparently it inserts a Byte Order Mark. I manually removed it in the first reply but overlooked it in the second.