Ordinarily, as White truly supposed, Peter lied only when he was drunk; but the sheriff could not estimate the vagaries of blood and so, at Truedale’s question, the father of Nella-Rose, with the gesture inherited from a time of prosperity, rallied his forces and lied!  Lied like a gentleman, he would have said.  Broken and shabby as Greyson was, he appeared, at that moment, so simple and direct, that his listener, holding to the sheriff’s estimate, was left with little doubt concerning what he heard.  He, watching the weak and agonized face, believed Greyson was making the best of a sad business; but that he was weaving from whole cloth the garment that must cover the past, Truedale in his own misery never suspected.  While he listened something died within him never to live again.

“Yes, sir.  I have another daughter—­lil’ Nella-Rose.”

Truedale shaded his face with his hand, but kept his eyes on Greyson’s distorted face.

“Lil’ Nella-Rose.  I have to keep in mind her youth and enjoying ways or I’d be right hard on Nella-Rose.  Yo’ may have heard, while travelling about—­o’ Nella-Rose?” This was asked nervously—­searchingly.

“I’ve—­I’ve heard that name,” Truedale ventured.  “It’s a name that—­somehow clings and, being a writer-man, everything interests me.”

Then Greyson gave an account of the trap episode tallying so exactly with White’s version that it established a firm structure upon which to lay all that was to follow.

“And there ain’t nothing as can raise a woman’s tenderness and loyalty to a man,” Greyson went on, “like getting into a hard fix, and sho’ Burke Lawson was in a right bad fix.

“I begin to see it all now.  Nella-Rose went to Merrivale’s and he told her Burke had come back.  Merrivale told me that.  Naturally it upset her and she followed him up to warn him.  Think o’ that lil’ girl tracking ’long the hills, through all that storm, to—­to save the man she had played with and flouted but loved, without knowing it!  Nella-Rose was like that.  She lit on things and took her fun—­but in the big parts she always did come out strong.”

Truedale shifted his position.

“I reckon I’m wearying you with my troubles?” Greyson spoke apologetically.

“No, no.  Go on.  This interests me very much.”

“Well, sir, Burke Lawson and Jed Martin came on each other in the deep woods the night of the big storm and Burke and Jed had words and a scene.  Jed owned up to that.  It was life and death and I ain’t blaming any one and I have one thing to thank Burke for—­he might have done different and left a stain on a lady’s name, sir!  He told Jed how he had seen Nella-Rose and how she had scorned him for being a coward, but how she would take her words back if he dared come out and show his head.  And he ’lowed he was going to come out then and there, which he did, and he and Nella-Rose was going off to Cataract Falls where the Lawsons hailed from, on the mother’s side.”