"He says Hermie, my own Hermie, has made every sacrifice to protect this Charlton Beardsley. It is not true. There was no one she despised and disliked so much. Whatever else is or is not true, that is. Do I not know? Did I not see her even quarrel with our dear father about this man because he had pretended to give messages from mother?" At this recollection she wept again, her head in her hands. "My dear, dear father," she whispered. "Oh, if he could come back to us! If he could only come back!" Durgan stood helpless. That faculty by which words arise unbidden in the mind kept obstinately repeating in Durgan's the name Charlton Beardsley, in that tone of almost tender compassion given to it by Miss Claxton when he last spoke to her. At last Bertha rose to go. "There is no such thing as truth," she cried. "I was false to Hermie in telling you what I did; you were false to me. Mr. Alden is a false friend to us all. There is no truth." Durgan laid a detaining hand on her arm. "Look up," he said. She looked up at the dogwood tree whose spring blossom had first cheered that rocky spot for Durgan. Across the unutterable brightness of the sky the tree held its horizontal sprays of golden leaves. The bluebird of the South, dashed with gloss of crimson and green, pecked at the scarlet berries. The tree glistened in the light of evening. Above and beyond it the sky was radiant with the level light. "Very probably there is no such thing as the truth you seek in this world," he said; "but there must be truth somewhere, or why should we all try to approximate to it, and feel so like whipped dogs when we have failed?" For two or three days after that Durgan heard nothing, but Alden came and went on the mountain road, and once again made the journey to Hilyard. At last, one evening after dark, Durgan received a message demanding his presence at the summit house. He went, and found the little family in some formal condition of distress--the elder lady sitting calm, but very sad, her usually busy hands idle in her lap; Bertha, her face swollen with tears, sitting beside her sister in an attitude of defiant protection; Alden moving restlessly about, his face blanched and haggard. The weather over all the mountain was still tense and dry. The cold had come without rain--a highly nervous condition for the human frame. It was only Miss Claxton who tried to make Durgan's arrival more agreeable to him by a few words of ordinary conversation.