"I know how you feel; but you wrong yourself. Any one would give you credit instead of blaming you--don't you ever think of that? And then--then, 'Tana, I tried to tell him down at the Ferry, because I thought you were in some game against him. I managed to tell him you were Holly's partner, but hadn't got any farther when the paralysis caught me. I hadn't time to tell him that Holly was your father, and that he made you go where he said; or that you dressed as a boy and was called 'Monte,' because that disguise was the only safety possible for you in the gambling dens where he took you. Part of it I didn't understand clearly at that time. I didn't know you really thought he was dead, and that you tramped alone into this region in your boy's clothes, so you could get a new start where no white folks knew you. I told him just enough to wrong you in his eyes, and then could not tell him enough to right you again. Now do you know why I want you to let me tell him all--while I can?" It had taken him a long time to say the words; his articulation had grown indistinct at times, and the excitement was wearing on him. Once the door into the room where the child lay swung open noiselessly, and he had turned his eyes in that direction; but the girl's head was bowed on the arm of his chair, and she did not notice it. "And then--there are other things," he continued. "He don't know you were the boy Fannie spoke of in that letter; or that she gave you the plot of this land; or, more--far more to me!--that you took care of her till she died. All that must give him many a worried thought, 'Tana, that you never counted on, for he liked you--and yet all along he has been made to think wrong of you." "I know," she assented. "He blamed me for--for a man being in my cabin that night, and I--I wanted him to--think well of me; but I could not tell him the truth, I was ashamed of it all my life. And the shame has got in my blood till I can't change it. I want him to know, but I can't tell him." "You don't need to," said a voice back of her, and she arose to see Overton standing in the door. "I did not mean to listen; but I stopped to look at the child, and I heard. I hope you are not sorry," and he came over to her with outstretched hand. She could not speak at first. She had dreamed of so many ways in which she would meet him--of what she would say to him; and now she stood before him without a word. "Don't be sorry, 'Tana," he said, and tightened his hand over her own. "I honor you for what I heard just now. You were wrong not to tell me; I might have saved you some troubles." "I was ashamed--ashamed!" she said, and turned away. "But it is not to me all this should be told," he said, more coldly. "Max is the one to know; or, maybe, he does know." "He knows a little--not much. Seldon and Haydon recognized--Holly. So the family knew that, but no more." It was so hard for her to talk to him there, where Harris looked from one to the other expectantly.