went to her desk, but presently moved and turned towards the window
thoughtfully. The last gleam had died from the steel-blue sky; a
few lights like star points began to prick out the lower valley. The
expression of monotonous restraint and endurance had not yet faded from
her face.

Yet she had been accustomed to scenes like the one she had just passed
though since her girlhood. Five years ago, Alexander Forsyth, her uncle,
had brought her to this spot--then a mere log cabin on the hillside--as
a refuge from the impoverished and shiftless home of his elder brother
Thomas and his ill-tempered wife. Here Alexander Forsyth, by reason of
his more dominant character and business capacity, had prospered until
he became a rich and influential ranch owner. Notwithstanding her
father's jealousy of Alexander's fortune, and the open rupture that
followed between the brothers, Josephine retained her position in the
heart and home of her uncle without espousing the cause of either; and
her father was too prudent not to recognize the near and prospective
advantages of such a mediator. Accustomed to her parents' extravagant
denunciations, and her uncle's more repressed but practical contempt of
them, the unfortunate girl early developed a cynical disbelief in the
virtues of kinship in the abstract, and a philosophical resignation to
its effects upon her personally. Believing that her father and uncle
fairly represented the fraternal principle, she was quite prepared for
the early defection and distrust of her vagabond and dissipated brother
Stephen, and accepted it calmly. True to an odd standard of justice,
which she had erected from the crumbling ruins of her own domestic
life, she was tolerant of everything but human perfection. This quality,
however fatal to her higher growth, had given her a peculiar capacity
for business which endeared her to her uncle. Familiar with the
strong passions and prejudices of men, she had none of those feminine