During her second year at the University she met Edward Crown,
a senior. He was the son of a blacksmith in the city, and he was
working his way through college with small assistance from his
parent, who held to the conviction that a man was far better off
if he developed his muscles by hard work and allowed the brain
to take care of itself. Young Crown was a good-looking fellow of
twenty-three, clean-minded, ambitious, dogged in work and dogged
in play. He had "made" the football team in his sophomore year.
Customary snobbishness had kept him out of the fraternities and
college societies. He may have been a good fellow, a fine student,
and a cracking end on the eleven, and all that, but he was not
acceptable material for any one of the half dozen fraternities.

When he left college with his hard-earned degree it was to accept
a position with a big engineering company, a job which called him
out to the far Northwest. Alix Windom was his promised wife. They
were deeply, madly in love with each other. Separation seemed
unendurable. She was willing to go into the wilderness with him,
willing to endure the hardships and the discomforts of life in a
construction camp up in the mountains of Montana. She would share
his poverty and his trials as she would later share his triumphs.
But when they went to David Windom with their beautiful dream, the
world fell about their ears.

David Windom, recovering from the shock of surprise, ordered Edward
from the house. He would sooner see his child dead than the wife
of Nick Crown's son,--Nick Crown, a drunken rascal who had been
known to beat his wife,--Nick Crown who was not even fit to lick
the feet of the horses he shod!