name. That this
property was largely lost during the civil war, leaving the Earlys
almost destitute at the time that broken-spirited lady died, had never
altered this fact; nor was it changed when, later, after the death of
both uncles, the property in partially restored shape came to the girl,
so bound beneath legal restrictions, that she could never have the
management of anything but the income. In fact, so engrossed had Early
become in his own money-making, by this, that he had little thought to
bestow upon a daughter who could never sympathize in what made life's
interest for him. He had controlled her existence to his own purposes,
knowing that an acknowledged home and daughter somehow give a man caste
in the community, but outside of certain restrictions, and very galling
ones, he had let her severely alone. Now that liberty and great means
had fallen to her, what use should she make of them?

She stood a moment looking around her, after she had alighted from the
train at the little brown one-room station-house, trying to take it all
in at one glance of her brilliant eyes. She had never been here before,
but she had had countless photographs made, and supposed herself
thoroughly acquainted with the spot. But, to some minds, photographs are
confusing things, jumbling up the points of compass in an unreliable
manner. Joyce found that it was almost as strange as if never pictured
out before her, and a great deal uglier than she had supposed. She
shivered as she gazed around upon the bleakness everywhere, perhaps
largely accentuated by a gray, chilly morning of early spring, with the
small patches of snow, left by winter, blackened and foul. Ellen Dover,
at her elbow, remarked plaintively,

"There, Miss Joyce, I knowed you'd need your sealskin such a day," to
which the girl only answered, with an odd smile,

"Even a sealskin couldn't stop that shiver, Ellen; it might make it
worse, indeed. Come, I think this is the way to the office. Doesn't it
say something over that door at the right? Yes, there it is--come on!"

They traversed a considerable space of uneven ground crossed and
recrossed by the narrow-gauge tracks upon which the sand and grit trucks
ran, avoiding one or two localities where steam shot upward from the
ground in a witch-like and erratic manner, with short angry hisses and
chopping sounds that suggested danger, and finally stood before the door
designated "OFFICE" in plain lettering. Joyce looked ar