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in all respects.
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!
One dark, rainy night in late June, Alix stole out of the old farmhouse
on the ridge and met her lover at the abandoned tollgate half a mile up
the road. He waited there with a buggy and a fast team of horses. Out of
a ramshackle cupboard built in the wall of the toll-house, they
withdrew the bundles surreptitiously placed there by Alix in
anticipation of this great and daring event, and made off toward the city
at a break-neck, reckless speed. They were married before midnight,
and the next day saw them on their way to the Far West. But not before
Alix had despatched a messenger to her father, telling him of her act
and asking his forgiveness for the sake of the love she bore him. The
same courier carried back to the city a brief response from David
Windom. In a shaken, sprawling hand he informed her that if she ever
decided to return to her home ALONE, he would receive her and
forgive her for the sake of the love he bore her, but if she came with the

coward who stole her away from him, he would kill him before her
eyes.
II
The summer and fall and part of the winter passed, and in early March
Alix came home.
David Windom, then a man of fifty, gaunt and grey and powerful,
seldom had left the farm in all these months. He rode about his
far-spread estate, grim and silent, his eyes clouded, his voice almost
metallic, his manner cold and repellent. His tenants, his labourers, his
neighbours, fearing him, rarely broke in upon his reserve. Only his
animals loved him and were glad to see him,--his dogs, his horses, even
his cattle. He loved them, for they were staunch and faithful. Never had
he uttered his daughter's name in all these months, nor was there a soul
in the community possessed of the hardihood to inquire about her or to
sympathize with him.
It was a fierce, cruel night in March that saw the return of Alix. A fine,
biting snow blew across the wide, open farmlands; the beasts of the
field were snugly under cover; no man stirred abroad unless driven by
necessity; the cold, wind-swept roads were deserted. So no one
witnessed the return of Alix Crown and her husband. They came out of
the bleak, unfriendly night and knocked at David Windom's door.
There were lights in his sitting-room windows; through them they
could see the logs blazing in the big fireplace, beside which sat the
lonely, brooding figure of Alix's father. It was late,--nearly
midnight,--and the house was still. Old Maria Bliss and the one other
servant had been in bed for hours. The farmhands slept in a cottage
Windom had erected years before, acting upon his wife's suggestion. It
stood some two or three hundred yards from the main house.
A dog in the stables barked, first in anger and then with unmistakable
joy.