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.
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