“Yes, Lyn, a great deal!” Truedale was sitting by the tiny hearth in his diminutive living room.  He and Lynda had demanded, and finally succeeded in obtaining an open space for real logs; disdaining, much to the owner’s amazement, an asbestos mat or gas monstrosity.  “I really put blood in the thing.”

“And when may I hear some of it?  I’m wild to get back to our beaten tracks.”

Truedale raised his eyes, but he was looking beyond Lynda; he was seeing Nella-Rose in the nest he was preparing for her.

“Soon, Lyn.  Soon.  And when you do—­you, of all the world, will understand, sympathize, and approve.”

“Thank you, Con, thank you.  Of course I will, but it is good to have you know it!  Let me see, what colour scheme shall we introduce in the living room?”

“Couldn’t we have a sort of blue-gray; a rather smoky tint with sunshine in it?”

“Good heavens, Con!  And it is a north room, too.”

“Well, then, how about a misty, whitish—­”

“Worse and worse.  Con, in a north room there must be warmth and real colour.”

“There will be.  But put what you choose, Lyn, it will surely be all right.”

“Suppose, then, we make it golden brown, or—­dull, soft reds?”

Truedale recalled the shabby little shawl that Nella-Rose had worn before she donned her winter disguise.

“Make it soft dull red, Lyn—­but not too dull.”

Truedale no longer meant to lay his secret bare before departing for the South.  While he would not acknowledge it to his anxious heart, he realized that he must base the future on the outcome of his journey.  Once he laid hands upon Nella-Rose, he would act promptly and hopefully, but—­he must be sure, now, before he made a misstep.  There had been mistakes enough, heaven knew; he must no longer play the fool.

And then when the little gilded cage was ready, Truedale conceived his big and desperate idea.  Two weeks had passed since Jim White’s letter and no telegram or note had come from Nella-Rose.  Neither love nor caution could wait longer.  Truedale decided to go to Pine Cone.  Not as a returned traveller, certainly not—­at first—­to White, but to Lone Dome, and there, passing himself off as a chance wayfarer, he would gather as much truth as he could, estimate the value of it, and upon it take his future course.  In all probability, he thought—­and he was almost gay now that he was about to take matters into his own hands—­he would ferret out the real facts and be back with his quarry before another week.  It was merely a matter of getting the truth and being on the spot.

Nella-Rose’s family might, for reasons of their own, have deceived Jim White.  Certainly if they did not know at the time of Nella-Rose’s whereabouts they would, like others, voice the suspicion of the hills; but by now they would either have her with them or know positively where she was.  For all his determination to believe this, Truedale had his moments of sickening doubt.  The simple statement in White’s letter, burned, as time went on, into his very soul.