Bertha's beauty came vividly before him--her kind, honest, impulsive girlhood. "God help her," he said slowly. "She has cheerfully borne worse than hell for love's sake, and such is the extreme tragedy of love, that if she is mistaken, all this loyalty and suffering can never atone for her mistake." Chapter XXIII WHAT 'DOLPHUS KNOWS Durgan left the breeze of the sunrise and the mountains behind him, and after that one first gallop, rode slowly down into the stillness of the lower country and the heat of the midday hours. The smoke of some distant forest fire filled the air, diffusing the sunlight in a golden glow. Who can tell the sweetness that the flame of distant pine-woods lends? It is not smoke after it has floated many hundred miles; it is a faint and delicious aroma and a tint in the air--that is all. On the lower side of the road now the hill dropped, in ragged harvest fields and half-cultivated vineyards, towards the wide hot cotton plains of the sea-board. On the other side were enclosed pastures where tame cattle were straying among young growths of trees, which were everywhere again conquering the once smooth clearings. In the long, central street of Hilyard, behind the weathered palings, garden flowers brimmed over. Great heads of phlox, white and crimson, sent forth the sweetest and most subtle fragrance. Petunias, large as ladies' bonnets, soft and purple, breathed of honey. Rose and poppy, love-in-a-mist and lovelies-bleeding, marigold and prince's feather, all fought for room in tangles of delight. Over the old wooden houses the morning-glory held its gorgeous cups still open under the mellow veil of smoke. No house in the town was newly painted, or bore to the world the sharp, firm outline of good repair; but there was not one which nature had not adorned with flower or vine or moss. Everywhere there was the trace of poverty and languor after war; everywhere there was beauty, sweetness, and warmth, and the gracious outline of repose. Hilyard lay on the way from the mountains to the broad plantations which still bore Durgan's name. It was soothing to him to find himself again in a country where he had lost so much for the Federal cause that he had gained proportionate respect. The mountain whites knew nothing but their own hills; but here, to everyone, high or low, it was enough that he was Neil Durgan, however shabby his clothes and empty his pocket; and he felt afresh the responsibility and self-confidence which an honorable ancestry and personal sacrifice have power to give. The interview with the magistrate was a short one. The trial of the two negroes was put off because the mulatto had asked for ten days in which to obtain money and advice from his friends in the North. A few days before Durgan would have been enraged at the delay on Adam's account; now he was only too thankful. He took his resolution, and obtained leave to visit both prisoners.