“Thanks, Lyn, I will.”  Then Truedale, safe from intrusion, tried to make his way out of the maze into which he had been thrown.  Slowly he recovered from the effect of the staggering blow and presently got to the point where he felt it was all a cruel lie or a stupid jest.  There he paused.  Jim was not the kind to lie or joke about such a thing.  It was a mistake—­surely a mistake.  He would go at once to Pine Cone and make everything right.  Nella-Rose could not act alone.  Tradition, training, conspired to unfit her for this crisis; but that she had gone from his love and faith into the arms of another man was incredible.  No; she was safe, probably in hiding; she would write him.  She had the address—­she was keen and quick, even though she was helpless to cope with the lawlessness of her mountain environment.  Truedale saw the necessity of caution, not for himself, but for Nella-Rose.  He could not go, unaided, to search for her.  Evidently there had been wild doings after he left; no one but White and Nella-Rose knew of his actual existence—­he must utilize White in assisting him, but above all he must expect that Nella-Rose would make her whereabouts known.  Never for a moment did he doubt her or put any credence in the conclusions White had drawn.  How little Jim really knew!  By to-morrow word would come from Nella-Rose; somehow she would manage, once she was safe from being followed, to get to the station and telegraph.  But there could be no leaving the girl in the hills after this; he must, as soon as he located her, bring her away; bring her into his life—­to his home and hers!

A cold sweat broke out on Truedale’s body as he lashed himself unmercifully in the still room where his two friends, one believing him asleep, waited for his awakening.

Well, he was awake at last, thank God!  The only difference between him and a creature such as good men and women abhor was that he meant to retrieve, as far as in him lay, the past error and injustice.  All his future life should prove his purpose.  And then, like a sweet fragrance or a spirit touch, his love pleaded for him.  He had been weak, but not vicious.  The unfettered life had clouded his reason, and his senses had played him false, but love was untarnished—­and it was love.  That girl of the hills was the same now as she had always been.  She would accept him and his people and he would make her life such that, once the homesickness for the hills was past, she would have no regrets.

Then another phase held Truedale’s thought.  In that day when Nella-Rose accepted, in the fullest sense, his people and his people’s code—­how would he stand in her eyes?  A groan escaped him, then another, and he started nervously.

“Con, what is it—­a bad dream?” Lynda touched his arm to arouse him.

“Yes—­a mighty bad one!”

“Tell it to me.  Tell it while it is fresh in your mind.  They say once you have put a dream in words, its effect is killed forever.”