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Ellen could only say good-by and the as so low as to be almost inaudible She ran to her burro She could not see very clearly through tear-blurred eyes, and her shaking fingers were all thumbs It seeet away fro, bursting self whose feet stumbled down the trail All--all seemed ended for her That inter And every s she had never known she possessed This Ellen Jorth was an unknown creature She sobbed now as she dragged the burro down the canyon trail She sat down only to rise She hurried only to stop Driven, pursued, barred, she had no way to escape the flaying thoughts, no tiirlhood, the rending aside of a veil of uessed, the barren, sordid truth of her life as seen by her enlightened eyes, the bitter realization of the vileness of men of her clan in contrast to the manliness and chivalry of an enemy, the hard facts of unalterable repute as created by slander and fostered by low minds, all these were forces in a cataclysh changes i her face to face with reality, to force upon her suspicion and doubt of all she had trusted, to warn her of the dark, iic bloody feud, and lastly to teach her the suprelorious and so terrible--that she could not escape the doom of womanhood

About noon that day Ellen Jorth arrived at the Knoll, which was the location of her father's ranch Three canyons er one The knoll was a symmetrical hill situated at the mouth of the three canyons It was covered with brush and cedars, with here and there lichened rocks showing above the bleached grass Below the Knoll was a wide, grassy flat or ed boulder-strewn bed Water flowed abundantly at this season, and the deep washes leading down from the slopes attested to the fact of cloudbursts and heavy storms This meadow valley was dotted with horses and cattle, and meandered away between the tiular feature of this canyon was that a heavy growth of spruce trees covered the slope facing northwest; and the opposite slope, exposed to the sun and therefore less snowbound in winter, held a sparse growth of yellow pines The ranch house of Colonel Jorth stood round the rough coest of the three canyons, and rather well hidden, it did not obtrude its rude and broken-down log cabins, its squalid surroundings, its black mud-holes of corrals upon the beautiful and serene meadow valley