escription keenly, "and you've made good in a few weeks.
You're a great advertisement for Pine Cone. And White! Isn't he God's
own man?"

"I hadn't thought of him in just that way"--Conning reverted to his last
memory of the sheriff--"but he probably showed another side to you. He
has a positive reverence for you and I imagine he accepted me as a duty
you had laid upon him."

"Nonsense, boy! his health reports were eulogies--he was your friend.

"But isn't he a freebooter with all his other charms? His contempt for
government, as we poor wretches know it, is sublime; and yet he is the
safest man I know. The law, he often told me, was like a lie; useful
only to scoundrels--torn-down scoundrels, he called them.

"I tell you it takes a God's man to run justice in those hills! White's
as simple and direct as a child and as wise as a judge ought to be. I
wouldn't send some folk I know to White, they might blur his vision;
but I could trust him to you."

Silently Truedale contemplated this image of White; then, as McPherson
talked on, the dead uncle materialized so differently from the stupid
estimate he had formed of him that a sense of shame overpowered him.
Lynda had somewhat opened Truedale's eyes, but Lynda's love and
compassion unconsciously coloured the picture she drew. Here was a
hard-headed business man, a man who had been close to William Truedale
all his life, proving him now, to his own nephew, as a far-sighted,
wise, even patient and merciful friend.

Never had Truedale felt so small and humble. Never had his past
indifference and false pride seemed so despicable and egotistical--his
return for the silent confidence reposed in him, so pitifully shameful.

He must bear his part now! There was no way but that! If he were ever to
regain his own self-respect or hope to hold that of others, he must, to
the exclusion of private inclination, rise as far as in him lay to the
demands made upon him.

"Your uncle," McPherson was saying, "tied hand and foot as he was,
looked far and wide during his years of illness. I thought I knew,
thought I understood him; but since his death I have almost felt that he
was inspired. It's a damnable pity that our stupidity and callousness
prevent us realizing in life what we are quick enough to perceive in
death--when it is too late! Truedale's faith in me, when I gave him so
little to go by, is both flattering and touching. He knew he could trust
me--and that knowledge is the be