"Maybe they didn't mean to lie, either," he mused thoughtfully. "Maybe they haven't really meant to lie--all this time. They could have been mistaken, just as she was tonight--they certainly could have been that." He found and filled a basin with cold water and washed out the cut until the bleeding had stopped entirely. And then, with the paper which that afternoon's mail had brought--the sheet with the astounding news of Jed The Red, which Old Jerry prophesied would put Boltonwood in black letters on the map of publicity--spread out on the table before him, he sat until daybreak poring over it with eyes that were filmed with preoccupation one moment and keenly strained the next to make out the close-set type. Not long before dawn he reached inside his coat and brought out a bit of burnished white card and set it up in front of him against the lamp. There was much in the plump, black capitals and knobby script of Judge Maynard's invitation which was very suggestive of the man himself, but Young Denny failed to catch the suggestion at that moment. He never quite knew when that decision became final, nor what the mental process was which brought it about. Nor did he even dream of the connection there might have been between it and that square of cardboard lying in front of him. Just once, as the first light came streaking in through the uncurtained window beside him, he nodded his head in deliberate, definite finality. "Why, it's the thing I've been waiting for," he stated, something close akin to wonder in his voice. "It's just a man's size chance. I'd have to take it--I'd have to do that, even if I didn't want to--for myself." And later, while he was kindling a fire in the stove and methodically preparing his own breakfast, he paused to add with what seemed to be absolute irrelevance: "Silk--silk, next to her skin!" There were only two trains a day over the single-track spur road that connected Boltonwood with the outer world beyond the hills; one which left at a most unreasonably inconvenient hour in the early morning and one which left just as inconveniently late at night. Denny Bolton, who had viewed from a distinctly unfavorable angle any possible enchantment which the town might chance to offer, settled upon the first as the entirely probable choice of the short, fat, brown-clad newspaper man, even without a moment's hesitation to weigh the merits of either. And the sight of the round bulk of the latter, huddled alone upon a baggage truck before the deserted Boltonwood station-shed, fully vindicated his judgment.