Not until the previous day had the news of her friends' misfortune
come to her, and although she had heard no hint of fraud, she
began to realize that they were involved in a serious tangle. To
the questions which she anxiously put to her uncle he had replied
that their difficulty arose from a technicality in the mining laws
which another man had been shrewd enough to profit by. It was a
complicated question, he said, and one requiring time to thrash
out to an equitable settlement. She had undertaken to remind him
of the service these men had done her, but, with a smile, he
interrupted; he could not allow such things to influence his
judicial attitude, and she must not endeavor to prejudice him in
the discharge of his duty. Recognizing the justice of this, she
had desisted.

For many days the girl had caught scattered talk between the Judge
and McNamara, and between Struve and his associates, but it all
seemed foreign and dry, and beyond the fact that it bore on the
litigation over the Anvil Creek mines, she understood nothing and
cared less, particularly as a new interest had but recently come
into her life, an interest in the form of a man--McNamara.

He had begun with quiet, half-concealed admiration of her, which
had rapidly increased until his attentions had become of a
singularly positive and resistless character.

Judge Stillman was openly delighted, while the court of one like
Alec McNamara could but flatter any girl. In his presence, Helen
felt herself rebelling at his suit, yet as distance separated them
she thought ever more kindly of it. This state of mind contrasted