The ranch house of Colonel Jorth stood round the rough comer of the largest 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.
Ellen Jorth approached her home slowly, with dragging, reluctant steps; and never before in the three unhappy years of her existence there had the ranch seemed so bare, so uncared for, so repugnant to her.

As she had seen herself with clarified eyes, so now she saw her home.

The cabin that Ellen lived in with her father was a single-room structure with one door and no windows.

It was about twenty feet square.

The huge, ragged, stone chimney had been built on the outside, with the wide open fireplace set inside the logs.