Was he fit to hear the truth?  Would he forgive her if she did not tell it?  If she lied about this, could she go on lying to his other questions?  When he discovered, later, would not the effect undo the good of lies now?  She decided to lie; but, when she opened her lips, simply could not, with his eyes on her; and said faintly:  “Yes, they did.”

His face contracted.  She slipped down at once and knelt beside his chair.  He said between his teeth: 

“Go on; tell me.  Did it all collapse?”

She could only stroke his hands and bow her head.

“I see.  What’s happened to them?”

Without looking up, she murmured: 

“Some have been dismissed; the others are working again all right.”

“All right!”

She looked up then so pitifully that he did not ask her anything more.  But the news put him back a week.  And she was in despair.  The day he got up again he began afresh: 

“When are the assizes?”

“The 7th of August.”

“Has anybody been to see Bob Tryst?”

“Yes; Aunt Kirsteen has been twice.”

Having been thus answered, he was quiet for a long time.  She had slipped again out of her chair to kneel beside him; it seemed the only place from which she could find courage for her answers.  He put his hand, that had lost its brown, on her hair.  At that she plucked up spirit to ask: 

“Would you like me to go and see him?”

He nodded.

“Then, I will—­to-morrow.”

“Don’t ever tell me what isn’t true, Nedda!  People do; that’s why I didn’t ask before.”

She answered fervently: 

“I won’t!  Oh, I won’t!”

She dreaded this visit to the prison.  Even to think of those places gave her nightmare.  Sheila’s description of her night in a cell had made her shiver with horror.  But there was a spirit in Nedda that went through with things; and she started early the next day, refusing Kirsteen’s proffered company.

The look of that battlemented building, whose walls were pierced with emblems of the Christian faith, turned her heartsick, and she stood for several minutes outside the dark-green door before she could summon courage to ring the bell.

A stout man in blue, with a fringe of gray hair under his peaked cap, and some keys dangling from a belt, opened, and said: 

“Yes, miss?”

Being called ‘miss’ gave her a little spirit, and she produced the card she had been warming in her hand.

“I have come to see a man called Robert Tryst, waiting for trial at the assizes.”

The stout man looked at the card back and front, as is the way of those in doubt, closed the door behind her, and said: 

“Just a minute, miss.”