Streaming from the doors and windows that night, it gave the

ROUND ANVIL ROCK

_A ROMANCE_

BY

NANCY HUSTON BANKS

AUTHOR OF "OLDFIELD"

1903

[Illustration: "The Angelus was pealing from the bell of the little

log chapel."]

TO MY FATHER

A PREFACE

In weaving a romance round a real rock and through actual events, this

tale has taken no great liberty with fact. It has, indeed, claimed the

freedom of fiction only in drawing certain localities and incidents

somewhat closer together than they were in reality. And it has done this

notably in but three instances: by allowing the Wilderness Road to seem

nearer the Ohio River than it really was; by anticipating the

establishment of the Sisters of Charity; and by disregarding the

tradition that Philip Alston had gone from the region of Cedar House

before the time of the story, and that he died elsewhere. These

deviations are all rather slight, yet they are, nevertheless, essential

to any faithful description of the country, the time, and the people,

which this tale tries to describe. The Wilderness Road--everywhere--came

so close to the life of the whole country that no true story of the time

can ever be told apart from it. The Sisters of Charity were established

so early and did so much in the making of Kentucky, that a few months

earlier in coming to one locality or a few years later in reaching

another, cannot make their noble work any less vitally a part of every

tale of the wilderness. The influence of Philip Alston over the country

in which he lived, lasted so much longer than his life, and the precise

date and manner of his death are go uncertain, that his romantic career

must always remain inseparably interwoven with all the romance of

southern Kentucky. And it is for these reasons that this story of nearly

a hundred years ago, has thus claimed a few of the many privileges of

fiction.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE GIRL AND THE BOY

II. THE HOUSE OF CEDAR

III. "PHILIP ALSTON, GENTLEMAN"

IV. THE NIGHT RIDE

V. ON THE WILDERNESS ROAD

VI. THE CAMP-MEETING

VII. A MORNING IN CEDAR HOUSE

VIII. THE LOG TEMPLE OF JUSTICE

IX. PAUL'S FIRST VISIT TO RUTH

X. FATHER ORIN AND TOBY MEET TOMMY DYE

XI. THE DANCE IN THE FOREST

XII. THE EVE OF ALL SOULS'

XIII. SEEING WITH DIFFERENT EYES

XIV. A SPIRITUAL CENTAUR

XV. THE WEB THAT SEEMED TO BE WOVEN

XVI. LOVE'S TOUCHSTONE

XVII. THE ONCOMING OF THE STORM

XVIII. THE GENTLEST ARE THE BRAVEST

XIX. UNDER THE HUNTER'S MOON

XX. BALANCING LIFE AND DEATH

XXI. THE EAGLE IN THE DOVE'S NEST

XXII. "A COMET'S GLARE FORETOLD THIS SAD EVENT"

XXIII. LOVE CLAIMS HIS OWN

XXIV. OLD LOVE'S STRIVING WITH YOUNG LOVE

XXV. THE PASSING OF PHILIP ALSTON

ILLUSTRATIONS

"The Angelus was pealing from the bell of the little log chapel"

"A dark, confused ... writhing mass of humanity"

"'I wanted to shake the hand of a man like you'"

Father Orin and Toby

"For she also was riding a great race"

"She was making an aeolian harp"

ROUND ANVIL ROCK

I

THE GIRL AND THE BOY

The Beautiful River grows very wide in making its great bend around

western Kentucky. On the other side, its shores are low for many miles,

but well guarded by giant cottonwoods. These spectral trees stand close

to its brink and stretch their phantom arms far over its broad waters,

as if perpetually warding off the vast floods that rush down from the

North.

But the floods are to be feared only in the winter or spring, never in

the summer or autumn. And nearly a hundred years ago, when the river's

shores were bound throughout their great length by primeval forests,

there was less reason to fear at any season. So that on a day of October

in the year eighteen hundred and eleven, the mighty stream lay safely

within its deep bounds flowing quietly on its way to join the Father of

Waters.

So gently it went that there was scarcely a ripple to break its silvery

surface. It seemed indeed hardly to move, reflecting the shadowy

cottonwoods like a long, clear, curving mirror which was dimmed only by

the breath of the approaching dusk. Out in the current beyond the

shadows of the trees, there still lingered a faint glimmer of the

afterglow's pale gold. But the red glory of the west was dying behind

the whitening cottonwoods and beyond the dense dark forest--reaching on

and on to the seeming end of the earth--a billowing sea of ever

deepening green. The last bright gleam of golden light was passing away

on the white sail of a little ship which was just turning the distant

bend, where the darkening sky bent low to meet the darkened wilderness.

The night was creeping from the woods to the waters as softly as the

wild creatures crept to the river's brim to drink before sleeping. The

still air was lightly stirred now and then by rushing wings, as the

myriad paroquets settled among the shadowy branches. The soft murmuring

of the reeds that fringed the shores told where the waterfowl had

already found resting-places. The swaying of the cane-brakes--near and

far--signalled the secret movements of the wingless wild things which

had only stealth to guard them against the cruelty of nature and against

one another. The heaviest waves of cane near the great Shawnee Crossing

might have followed a timid red deer. For the Shawnees had vanished from

their town on the other side of the Ohio. Warriors and women and

children--all were suddenly and strangely gone; there was not even a

canoe left to rock among the rushes. The swifter, rougher waving of the

cane farther off may have been in the wake of a bold gray wolf. The

howling of wolves came from the distance with the occasional gusts of

wind, and as often as the wolves howled, a mysterious, melancholy

booming sounded from the deeper shadows along the shores. It was an

uneasy response from the trumpeter swans, resting like some wonderful

silver-white lilies on the quiet bosom of the dark river.

A great river has all the sea's charm and much of its mystery and

sadness. The boy standing on the Kentucky shore was under this spell as

he listened to these sounds of nature at nightfall on the Ohio, and

watched the majestic sweep of its waters--unfettered and

unsullied--through the boundless and unbroken forests. Yet he turned

eagerly to listen to another sound that came from human-kind. It was the

wild music of the boatman's horn winding its way back from the little

ship, now far away and rounding the dusky bend. Partly flying and partly

floating, it stole softly up the shadowed river. The melody echoed from

the misty Kentucky hills, lingered under the overhanging trees, rambled

through the sighing cane-brakes, loitered among the murmuring

rushes--thus growing ever fainter, sweeter, wilder, sadder, as it came.

He did not know why this sound of the boatman's horn always touched him

so keenly and moved him so deeply. He could not have told why his eyes

grew strangely dim as he heard it now, or why a strange tightening came

around his heart. He was but an ignorant lad of the woods. It was not

for him to know that these few notes--so few, so simple, so artlessly

blown by a rude boatman--touched the deep fountain of the soul, loosing

the mighty torrent pent up in every human breast. Pity, tenderness,

yearning, the struggle and the triumph of life,--the boy felt everything

and all unknowingly, but with quivering sensibility. For he was not

merely an ignorant lad; he was also one of those who are set apart

throughout their lives to feel many things which they are never

permitted to comprehend.

When the last echo of the boatman's horn had melted among the darkling

hills, he turned as instinctively as a sun-worshipper faces the east and

drank in another musical refrain. The Angelus was pealing faintly from

the bell of the little log chapel far up the river, hidden among the

trees. The faith which it betokened was not his own faith, nor the faith

of those with whom he lived, but the beauty and sweetness of the token

appealed to him none the less. How beautiful, how sweet it was! As it

thus came drifting down with the river's deepening shadows, he thought

of the little band of Sisters--angels of charity--kneeling under that

rough roof; those brave gentlewomen of high birth and delicate breeding

who were come with the very first to take an heroic part in the making

of Kentucky and, so doing, in the winning of the whole West. As the boy

thought of them with a swelling heart,--for they had been kind to

him,--it seemed that they were braver than the hunters, more courageous

than the soldiers. Listening to the appeal of the Angelus stealing so

tenderly through the twilight, with the strain of poetry that was in him

thrilling in response, he felt that the prayers then going up must fill

the cruel wilderness with holy incense; that the coming of these gentle

Sisters must subdue the very wild beasts, as the presence of the lovely

martyrs subdued the lions of old.

"Ah, David! David!" cried a gay young voice behind him. "Dreaming

again--with your eyes wide open. And seeing visions, too, no doubt."

He turned with a guilty start and looked up at Ruth. She was standing

near by but higher on the river bank, and her slender white form was

half concealed by the drooping foliage of a young willow tree. There was

something about Ruth herself that always made him think of a young

willow with every graceful wand in bloom. And now--as nearly

always--there was a flutter of soft whiteness about her, for the day was

as warm as mid-summer. He could not have told what it was that she wore,

but her fluttering white garments might have been woven of the mists

training over the hills, so ethereal they looked, seen through the

golden green of the delicate willow leaves that were still gilded by

the afterglow which had vanished from the shadowed river. Her smiling

face could not have been more radiant had the sunlight shone full upon

it. The dusk of evening seemed always lingering under the long curling

lashes that made her blue eyes so dark, and her hair was as black at

midday as at midnight. So that now--when she shook her head at the

boy--a wonderful long, thick, silky lock escaped its fastenings, and the

wind caught it and spun it like silk into the finest blue-black floss.

"Yes, sir, you've been dreaming again! You needn't pretend you were

thinking--you don't know how to think. Thinking is not romantic enough.

I have been here watching you for a long time, and I know just how

romantic the dreams are that you have been dreaming. I could tell by the

way you turned,--this way and that,--looking up and down the river. It

always bewitches you when the sun goes and the shadows come. I knew I

should find you here, just like this; and I came on purpose to wake and

scold you."

She pretended to draw her pretty brow into a frown, but she could not

help smiling.

"Seriously, dear, you must stop dreaming. It is a dreadful thing to be a

dreamer in a new country. State makers should all be wide-awake workers.

You are out of place here; as Uncle Philip Alston says--"

"Then why did he put me here?" the boy burst out bitterly.

"David!" she cried in wounded reproach, "how can you? It hurts me to

hear you say things like that. I can't bear to hear any one say anything

against him--I love him so. And from you--who owe him almost as much as

I do--"

The tears were very near. But she was a little angry, too, and her blue

eyes flashed.

"No; no one owes him so much--as myself. He couldn't have been so

good--no one ever could be so good to any one else as he has always been

to me. Still"--softening suddenly, for she was fond of the boy, and

something in his sensitive face went to her tender heart--"think, David,

dear, we owe him everything we have,--our names, our home, our clothes,

our education, our very lives. We must never for a moment forget that it

was he who found us all alone--you in a cabin on the Wilderness Road and

me in a boat at Duff's Fort--and brought us in his own arms to Cedar

House. And you know as well as I do that he would have given us a home

in his own house if it had not been so rough and bare a place, a mere

camp. And then there was no woman in it to take care of us, and we were

only little mites of babies--poor, crying, helpless morsels of humanity.

Where do you think we came from, David? I wonder and wonder and wonder!"

wistfully, with her gaze on the darkening river.

It was an old question, and one that they had been asking themselves

and one another and every one, over and over, ever since they had been

old enough to think. The short story which Philip Alston had told was

all that he or any one knew or ever was to know. The boy silently shook

his head. The girl went on:--

"Sometimes I am sorry that we couldn't live in his house. You would have

understood him better and have loved him more--as he deserves. It is

only that you don't really know each other," she said gently. "And then

I should like to do something for him--something to cheer him--who does

everything for me. It must be very sad to be alone and old. It grieves

me to see him riding away to that desolate cabin, especially on stormy

nights. But he never will let me come to his house, though I beg and

beg. He says it is too rough, and that too many strange men are coming

and going on business."

"Yes; too many strange men on very strange business."

She did not hear or notice what he said, because the sound of horses'

feet echoing behind them just at that moment caused her to turn her

head. Two horsemen were riding along the river bank, but they were a

long way off and about turning into the forest path as her gaze fell

upon them. She stood still, silently looking after them till they

disappeared among the trees.

"Father Orin and Toby will get home before dark to-night. That is

something uncommon," she said with a smile.

Toby was the priest's horse, but no one ever spoke of the one without

thinking of the other; and then, Toby's was a distinct and widely

recognized personality.

"But who is the stranger with them, David? Oh, I remember! It must be

the new doctor,--the young doctor who has lately come and who is curing

the Cold Plague. The Sisters told me. They said that he and Father Orin

often visited the sick together and were already great friends. How tall

he is--even taller than Father Orin, and broader shouldered. I should

like to see his face. And how straight he sits in the saddle. You would

expect a man who holds himself so to carry a lance and tilt fearlessly

at everything that he thought was wrong."

She turned, quickly tossing the willow branches aside and laughing

gayly. "There now, that will set you off thinking of your knights again!

But you must not. Truly, you must not. For it is quite true, dear; you

are a dreamer, a poet. You do indeed belong to the Arcadian Hills. You

should be there now, playing a gentle shepherd's pipe and herding his

peaceful flocks. And instead--alas!"--she looked at him in perplexity

which was partly real and partly assumed--"instead you are here in this

awful wilderness, carrying a rifle longer and heavier than yourself, and

trying to pretend that you like to kill wild beasts, or can endure to

hurt any living thing."

David said nothing; there seemed to be no response for him to make. When

a well-grown youth of eighteen or thereabouts is spoken to by a girl

near his own age as he had just been spoken to by Ruth, he rarely finds

anything to say. No words could do justice to what he feels. And there

is nothing for him to do either, unless it be to take refuge in a

dignified silence which disdains the slightest notice of the offence.

This was what David resorted to, and, bending down, he calmly and

quietly raised his forgotten rifle from the ground to his shoulder. He

did it very slowly and impressively, however, in the hope that Ruth

might realize the fact that he had killed the buck whose huge horns made

the rifle's rest on his cabin walls. But she saw and realized only that

he was wounded, and instantly darted toward him like a swallow. She

caught his rigid rifle arm and clung to it, looking up in his set face.

Her blue eyes were already filling with tears while the smile was still

on her lips. That was Ruth's way; her smiles and tears were even closer

together than most women's are; she was nearly always quiveringly poised

between gayety and sadness; like a living sunbeam continually glancing

across life's shadows.

"What is it, David, dear?" she pleaded, with her sweet lips close to his

ear. "What foolish thing have I said? You must know--whatever it

was--that it was all in fun. Why, I wouldn't have you different, dear,

if I could! I couldn't love you so much if you were not just what you

are. And yet," sighing, "it might be better for you."

She laid her head against his shoulder and drew closer to him in that

soft little nestling way of hers. David looked straight over the lovely

head, keeping his grim gaze as high as he could. He knew how it would be

if his stern gray eyes were to meet Ruth's wet blue ones. He was still a

boy, but trying to be a man--and beginning to understand. No man with

his heart in the right place could hold out against her pretty coaxing.

It was sweet enough to wile the very birds out of the trees. It made no

difference that he had been used to her wiles from babyhood up. To be

used to Ruth's ways only made them harder to resist. No stranger could

possibly have foreseen his defeat as clearly as David foresaw his at the

moment that she started toward him. But self-respect required him to

stand firm as long as possible, although he felt the strength going out

of his rifle arm under her clinging touch. She felt it going, too, and

began to smile through her tears. And then, sure of her victory, she

threw caution to the winds--as older and wiser women have done too

openly in vanquishing stronger and more masterful men. She let him see

that she knew she had conquered, which is always a fatal mistake on the

part of a woman toward a man. Smiling and dimpling, she put up her hand

and patted his cheek--precisely as if he had been a child.

The boy shrunk as if the caress had been a touch of fire. He broke away

and strode off up the hillside with his longest, manliest stride. This

humiliation was past bearing or forgiving. He could have forgiven being

called a dreamer--a useless drone--among the men of clear heads and

strong hands who had already wrested a great state from the wilderness,

and who, through this conquest, were destined to become the immortal

founders of the Empire of the West. He could have overlooked being

spoken to like a child by a girl who might be younger than himself for

all he or she knew to the contrary--though this would have been harder.

He might even have forgiven that pat on his cheek which was downy with

beard, had he been either younger or older. But as it was--well, the

matter may safely be left to the sympathy of the man who remembers the

most sensitive time of his own youth; that trying period when he feels

himself to be no longer a boy and nobody else considers him a man.

David did not know where he was going or what he meant to do. He was

blindly striding up the river bank away from Ruth, fairly aflame with

the determination to do something--anything--to prove his manhood. For

nothing ever makes a boy resolve quite so suddenly and firmly to become

a man instantly as to be treated by a girl as he had been by Ruth. Had

the most desperate danger then come in David's way, he would have hailed

and hazarded it with delight. But he could not think of anything to

overwhelm her with just at that moment, and so he could only stride on

in helpless, angry silence. Ruth flew after him as if her thin white

skirts had been strong, swift wings. She overtook him before he had gone

very far, and clung to him again more than ever like some beautiful

white spirit of the woods wreathed in mist, with her soft blown garments

and her softer blown hair. She merely wound herself around him at first,

breathless and panting. But as soon as she caught her breath the

coaxing, the laughing, and the crying came all together. David kept from

looking down as long as he could, but his pace slackened and his arm

again relaxed. Finally--taken off guard--he glanced at the face so near

his breast. The dusk could not dim its beauty and only made it more

lovely. No more resistance was possible for him--or for any man or

boy--who saw Ruth as she looked then. David's big rough hand was now

surrendered meekly enough to the quick clasp of her little fingers,

and--forgetting all the daring deeds that he meant to do--he was led

like any lamb up the hill to the open door of Cedar House.

II

THE HOUSE OF CEDAR

So far as they knew, there was no tie of blood or relationship binding

them to the kind people of Cedar House. Yet it was the only home that

they could remember and very dear to them both.

It was a great square of rough, dark logs, and seemed now, seen through

the uncertain light, to stand in the centre of a shadowy hamlet, so many

smaller cabins were clustered around it. The custom of the country was

to add cabin after cabin as the family outgrew the original log house.

The instinct of safety, the love of kindred, and the longing for society

in the perilous loneliness of the wilderness held these first

Kentuckians very close together. So that as their own villages thus grew

around them and only their own dwelt near them, they naturally became as

clannish as their descendants have been ever since.

The cabin nearest Cedar House contained two rooms, and was used by its

master, Judge Knox, for his own bedroom and law office. There was a

still larger cabin somewhat more distant from the main building, which

was intended for the use of his nephew, William Pressley, on the

marriage of that young lawyer to Ruth. But the wedding was some time off

yet, having been set for Christmas Eve, and the cabin which was to

welcome the bride from Cedar House was not quite complete. The smallest

and the oldest cabin was David's. The long black line of cabins

crouching under the hillside where the shadows were deepest, marked the

quarters of the slaves,--a dark storm-cloud already settling heavily on

the fair horizon of the new state.

Cedar House itself was the grandest of its time in all that country.

Built entirely of huge red cedar logs it was two stories in height, the

first house of more than one story standing on the shores of the

southern Ohio. Its roof was the wonder and envy of the whole region for

many years. The shingles were of black walnut, elegantly rounded at the

butt-ends. They were fastened on with solid walnut pegs driven in holes

bored through both the shingles and the laths with a brace and a bit.

For there was not a nail in Cedar House from its firm foundation to its

fine roof. Even the hinges and the latch of the wide front door were

made of wood. The judge often mentioned this fact with much pride, and

never failed to add that the leathern latch-string always hung outside.

But he was still prouder of the massive, towering chimney of Cedar

House, and with good reason. The other houses thinly scattered through

the wilderness had humble chimneys of sticks covered with clay. The

chimney of Cedar House was of rough stone--of one hundred wagon loads,

as the judge boasted--which had been hauled with great difficulty over a

long distance, because there was none near by.

On the wide hearth of this great chimney a fire was always burning. No

matter what the season or the weather might be, there was always a

solemn ceremony around the hearth when the fire was renewed, at the

beginning and the close of every day all the year round. In winter it

was a glorious bonfire consuming great logs. In summer it was the merest

glimmer that could hold a flickering spark. Between winter and summer,

as on this mild October evening, a bright flame sometimes danced gayly

behind the big brass andirons, while all the windows and doors were wide

open. But through cold and heat, and burning high or low, the fire was

never entirely forgotten, never quite permitted to go out. Thus ever

alight it burned like a sacred flame on the altar of home.

Streaming from the doors and windows that night, it gave the youth and

the maiden a cheerful welcome as they came up the darkening hillside.

Lamplight also began to glimmer, and candles flitted here and there

before the windows and door, borne by the dark shapes of the servants

who were laying the table for supper. The main room of Cedar House

opened directly upon the river front; and when brightly lighted, it

could be distinctly seen from without. Ruth and David paused on the

threshold, still unconsciously holding one another's hands, and looked

in.

There were five persons in the room, three men and two women, and they

were all members of the household with the exception of Philip Alston,

the white-haired gentleman, whose appearance bore no other mark of age.

And he also might have been considered as one of the family, since he

had been coming to the house daily for many years. He came usually to

see Ruth, but of late he had found it necessary to see William Pressley

more often; and they were talking eagerly and in a low tone, rather

apart, when the boy and girl paused to see and hear what was taking

place within the great room. William Pressley sat in the easiest chair

in the warmest corner, close to the hearth. There are some men--and a

few women--who always take the softest seat in the best place, and they

do it so naturally that no one ever thinks of their doing anything else

or expects them to sit elsewhere. William Pressley was one of these

persons. In the next easiest chair, on the other side of the hearth, was

his aunt, the widow Broadnax, whose short, broad, shapeless, inert

figure was lying rather than sitting almost buried in a heap of

cushions. This lady was the sister of the judge and the half-sister of

the other lady, Miss Penelope Knox,--the thin, nervous, restless little

old woman,--who was fidgeting back and forth between the hearth and the

doorway leading to the distant kitchen. The relationship of these two

ladies to one another, and the difference in their relationship to the

head of Cedar House, caused much dissension in the household, and gave

rise to certain domestic complications which always rose when least

expected.

The fire had been freshly kindled with small twigs of the sugar maple,

that priceless tree often standing fifty to an acre in the wilderness,

and giving the pioneers their best fire-wood, their coolest shade, and

their sweetest food. Vivid blue sparks were still flashing among the

little white stars of the gray moss on the big backlog. From the blazing

ends of the log there came the soft, airy music and the faint, sweet

scent of bubbling sap. This main room of Cedar House was very large,

almost vast, taking up the whole lower floor. It was the dining room as

well as the sitting room; and when some grand occasion arose, it served

even as a drawing-room, and did it handsomely, too. This great room of

Cedar House always reminded David of the ancient halls in "The Famous

History of Montilion," a romance of chivalry from which most of his

ideas of life were taken, and upon which most of his ideals of living

were formed. Surely, he thought, the castle of the "Knight of the

Oracle" could not be grander than this great room of Cedar House.

The rich dark wood of its walls and floor--all rudely smoothed with the

broadaxe and the whipsaw--hung overhead in massive beams. From these

low, blackened timbers there swung many antique lamps, splendid enough

for a palace and strangely out of place in a log house of the

wilderness. On the rough walls there were also large sconces of

burnished silver but poorly filled with tallow candles. In the bare

spaces between these silver sconces were the heads of wild animals

mingled with many rifles, both old and new, and other arms of the

hunter. Over the tall mantelpiece there were crossed two untarnished

swords which had been worn by the judge's father in the Revolution. On

the red cedar of the floor, polished by wear and rubbing, there lay the

skins of wild beasts, together with costly foreign rugs. The same

strange mixture of rudeness and refinement was to be seen everywhere

throughout the room. The table standing in the centre of the floor,

ready for the evening meal, was made of unplaned boards, rudely put

together by the unskilled hands of the backwoods. Yet it was set with

the finest china, the rarest glass, and the richest silver that the

greatest skill of the old world could supply. The chairs placed around

the table were made of unpainted wood from the forest, with seats woven

out of the coarse rushes from the river. And there, between the front

windows, stood Ruth's piano, the first in that part of the wilderness,

and as fine as the finest of its day anywhere.

It is true that something like the same confusion of luxury and wildness

was becoming more or less common throughout the country. The wain trains

which had lately followed the packhorse trains over the

Alleghanies--with the widening of the Wilderness Road--were already

bringing many comforts and even luxuries to the cabins of the well-to-do

settlers. But nothing like those which were fetched constantly to Cedar

House ever came to any other household; and it was not the family who

caused them to be brought there. For while the judge was a man of wealth

for his time and place, and able to give his family greater comfort than

his poorer neighbors could afford, he was far from having the means,

much less the taste and culture, to gather such costly, beautiful, and

rare things as were gathered together in Cedar House. It was through

Philip Alston that everything of this kind had come. It was he who had

chosen everything and paid for it, and ordered it fetched over the

mountains from Virginia or up the river from France or Spain--all as

gifts from him to Ruth. It was natural enough that he should give her

whatever he wished her to have, and there was no reason why she should

not accept any and everything that he gave. She was held by him and by

every one as his adopted daughter. He had no children of his own, no

relations of any degree so far as any one knew, and he was known to be

generous and believed to be very rich. Indeed no one thought much about

his gifts to Ruth; they had long since become a matter of course, a part

of the everyday life of Cedar House. They had begun with Ruth's coming

more than seventeen years before. As a baby she had been rocked in a

cradle such as never before had been seen in the wilderness,--a very gem

of wonderful carving and inlaid work from Spain. As a little child she

had been dressed--as no little one of the wild wood ever had been

before--in the finest fabrics and the daintiest needlework from the

looms and convents of France. Very strange things may become familiar

through use. The simple people of Cedar House and their rude neighbors

were well used to all this. They had seen the beautiful blue-eyed baby

grow to be a more beautiful child, and the child to a most beautiful

maiden, and always surrounded by the greatest refinement and luxury that

love and means could bring into the wilderness. Naturally enough they

now found nothing to wonder at, in the daily presence of this radiant

young figure among them.

It was only for an instant that the girl and boy stood thus unseen on

the threshold of Cedar House, looking into the great room. Philip Alston

saw them almost at once. He had been watching and waiting for Ruth, as

he always was when she was out of his sight even for a moment. He sprang

up, quickly and alertly, like a strong young man, and went to meet her

with his gallant air. She held up her cheek smilingly; he bent and

kissed it, and taking her hand with his grand bow, led her across the

room. The judge and his nephew also arose, as they always did when she

came in or went out. The judge did this unconsciously, without thinking,

and scarcely knowing that he did do it; for he was a plain man, rather

awkward and very absent-minded, and deeply absorbed in the study of his

profession. William Pressley did it with deliberate intention and

self-consciousness, as he did everything that he deemed fitting. It was

his nature to give grave thought to the least thing that he said or did.

It was his sincere conviction that the smallest matter affecting himself

was of infinitely greater importance than the greatest that could

possibly concern any one else. There are plenty of people who believe

this as sincerely as he believed it, but there are few who show the

belief with his candor. When he now stood up to place a chair for Ruth

beside his own, he did the simple service as if the critical eyes of the

world had been upon him. And his manner was so consciously correct that

no one observed that the chair which he gave her was not so comfortable

as his own. He was uncommonly good-looking, also, and tall and shapely,

yet there was something about his full figure--that vague,

indescribable something--which unmistakably marks the lack of virility

in mind or body, no matter how large or handsome a man may be. He stood

for a moment after Ruth was seated, and then, seeing that Philip Alston

was about to lift a candle-stand which was heaped with parcels, he went

to aid him, and the two men together set the little table before her.

She looked at it with soft, excited cries of surprise and delight,

instantly divining that the unopened parcels and sealed boxes contained

more of the gifts which her foster-father was constantly lavishing upon

her. He smiled down at her beaming face and dancing eyes, and then

taking out his pocket-knife he cut the cords and removed the covers of

the boxes. As the wrappings fell away, there was a shimmer of dazzling

tissues, silver and gold.

"Oh! oh!" she cried.

"Just a few pretty trifles, my dear," he said. "You like them?"

"Like them!"

Repeating his words she sprang up, and running round the candle-stand,

stood on the very tips of her toes so that she might throw her arms

about his neck. He bent his head to meet her upturned face, and if ever

tenderness shone in a man's pale, grave face, it shone then in his. If

ever love--pure and unselfish--beamed from a man's eyes, it was beaming

now from those looking down in the girl's face. His tender gaze

followed her fondly as she went back to the candle-stand and began to

examine each article again more than once and with lingering and growing

delight. She found new beauties every moment, and pointed them out to

the three men and the boy who were now gathered around her. She called

the ladies also, over and over, but they did not come, although they

cast many glances at the candle-stand.

Miss Penelope was engaged in making the coffee for supper; and while she

did not consider the making of the coffee for supper quite so vital a

matter as the making of the coffee for breakfast, she still could not

think of leaving the hearth under any inducement so long as the

coffee-pot sat on its trivet above the glowing coals. The widow Broadnax

stirred among her cushions once or twice, as if almost on the point of

trying to get out of her chair. She was fonder of finery than her

half-sister was, and she would have liked very much to see these

beautiful things nearer. But she was still fonder of her own ease than

of finery, and it was really a great deal of trouble to get out of her

deep, broad low chair. And then she never moved or took her eyes off her

half-sister while that energetic lady was engaged in making the coffee.

Knowing the ladies' ways, Ruth did not expect them to come. She was

quite satisfied to have the men share her pleasure in the presents.

They were looking at her and not at the gifts lying heaped on the

candle-stand, but she did not notice that. She gave the judge a

priceless piece of lace to hold. He took it with the awkward, helpless

embarrassment of a manly man handling a woman's delicate

belongings,--the awkwardness that goes straight to a woman's heart,

because she sees and feels its true reverence--a reverence just as plain

and just as sweet to the simplest country girl as to the wisest woman of

the world. The perception of it is a matter of intuition, not one of

experience. The least experienced woman instantly distrusts the man who

can touch her garments with ease or composure. Ruth's gay young voice

broke into a sweet chime of delighted laughter when the judge seized the

airy bit of lace as if it had been the heaviest and hottest of crowbars.

She laughed again when she looked at his face. He had an odd trick of

lifting one of his eyebrows very high and at an acute angle when

perplexed or ill at ease. This eccentric left eyebrow--now quite

wedge-shaped--had gone up almost to the edge of his tousled gray hair.

Ruth patted his great clumsy hands with her little deft ones.

"Well, I'll have to take to the woods, if there's no other way of

escape," said the judge, making his greatest threat.

"You dear!" she said, running her arm through his and giving it a little

squeeze. "That's right. Hold it tight--be careful, or it will break.

Here, William," piling the young man's arms full of delicately tinted

gauze, "this is a sunset cloud. And these," casting lengths of exquisite

tissue over the boy's shoulder, "these are the mists of the dawn,

David,--all silvery white and golden rose and jewelled blue. But--oh!

oh!--these are the loveliest of all! A pair of slippers in

orange-blossom kid, spangled with silver! Look at them! Just look,

everybody!"

Holding them in her hand she ran round the table again to throw her arms

about Philip Alston's neck the second time, like a happy, excited child.

The little white slippers went up with her arms and touched his cheek.

And then he drew them down, and clasping her slender wrists, held her

out before him and looked at her with fond, smiling eyes.

"I don't believe that the Empress Josephine has any prettier slippers

than those," he said. "I ordered the prettiest and the finest in Paris."

"Who fetched all these things?" the judge broke in, with something like

a sudden realization of the number and the value of the gifts.

"Oh, a friend of mine," responded Philip Alston, carelessly, and without

turning his head,--"a friend who has many ships constantly going and

coming between New Orleans and France. He orders anything I wish; and

when it comes to him, he sends it on to me by the first flatboat

cordelled up the river."

"What is his name?" asked the judge, with a persistence very uncommon in

him.

Philip Alston turned now and glanced at him with an easy, almost

bantering smile.

"I don't like to tell you his name, because you--with a good many other

honestly mistaken people--are most unjustly prejudiced against him. And

then you know well enough that I am speaking of my respected and trusted

friend, Monsieur Jean Lafitte."

The judge dropped the lace as if it had burnt his hand. He went back to

his seat by the window in silence. He sat down heavily and looked at

Philip Alston in perplexity, rubbing his great shock of rough grizzled

hair the wrong way as he always did when worried. His thoughts were

plainly to be read on his open, rugged face. This liking of Philip

Alston's for a man under a national ban was an old subject of worry and

perplexity. Yet Alston was always as frank and as firm about it as he

had been just now, and the judge's confidence in him was absolute.

Robert Knox's own character must have changed greatly before he could

have doubted the sincerity of any one whom he had known as long, as

intimately, and as favorably as he had known Philip Alston. We all judge

others by ourselves,--whether we do it consciously or not,--since we

have no other way of judging. And the judge himself was so simple, so

sincere, so essentially honest, that he could not doubt one who was in a

way a member of his own family. And then he was absent-minded,

unobservant, easy-going, indolent, and the slave of habit, as such a

nature is apt to be. Moreover, he was not always master of the slight

power of observation which had been given him. That very day, while on

his way home from the court-house, he had stopped at a cabin where

liquor was sold. As a consequence, this sudden touch of uneasiness which

aroused him for an instant was forgotten nearly as suddenly as it came.

So that after looking bewilderedly at Philip Alston once or twice, he

now began to nod and doze.

III

"PHILIP ALSTON, GENTLEMAN"

Philip Alston still stood before the candle-stand. His gaze rested on

the girl's radiant face with wistful tenderness. It was plain that he

thought nothing of all these rich, rare gifts which he had given her,

save only as they gave her pleasure and might win from her another

loving look, another butterfly kiss on his cheek.

As he stood there that night in the great room of Cedar House, before

the firelight and under the beams of the swinging lamps, he scarcely

appeared to need the help of any gift in winning a woman's love. His was

a presence to hold the gaze. He was very tall and straight and slender,

yet most finely proportioned. The heavy hair, falling back from his

handsome face and tied in a queue, must once have been as black as

Ruth's own; surely, no paler shade could have become so silvery white.

His eyes, also, were as blue as hers, and none could have been bluer.

His skin was almost as fair and smooth as hers, his manner as gentle and

kind, his voice as soft and his smile as sweet. He was elegantly

dressed, as he always was, his fine long coat of forest green

broadcloth had a wide velvet collar and large gold buttons. His velvet

knee-breeches and the wide riband which tied his queue were of the same

rich shade of dark green. The most delicate ruffles filled the front of

his swan's-down vest and fell over his hands, which were remarkably

white and small and taper-fingered, like a fine lady's. His white silk

stockings and his low shoes were held by silver buckles. So looked

Philip Alston, Gentleman,--and so he was called,--as he stood in the

great room of Cedar House on that night of October, nearly a hundred

years ago. And thus he is described in the few rare old histories which

touch the romance of this region when he ruled it like a king, by the

power of his intelligence and the might of his will.

He was foremost in the politics of the time as in everything else, and

he and William Pressley had been discussing this subject at the moment

of Ruth's appearance, which had interrupted their conversation. Philip

Alston had forgotten the unfinished topic, but William Pressley had not.

He, also, had been pleased to look on for a while at the girl's radiant

delight; and he, also, had enjoyed the charming scene. But there was a

lull now, and he at once turned back to the matter in which he was most

deeply interested. Ambition for political preferment was the theme which

most absorbed his mind, and ambition was the one thing which could

always light a spark of fire in his cold, hard, shallow hazel eyes.

This was not for the reason that he cared especially for politics in

itself, which he did not. But he turned to it in preference to warfare,

since the choice of the ambitious young men of the wilderness lay

between the two. Politics seemed to him to open the surest and shortest

road to the prominence which he craved above everything else. He was one

of those unfortunates who can never be happy on a level--even with the

highest--and who must look down in order to be at all content with life.

Yet with this overweening and insatiable craving for distinction and

prominence, he had been given no talent by which distinction may be won;

had been granted no quality, mental, moral, or physical, by which he

might rise above the mass of his fellows. It was a cruel trick for

Nature to play, and one that she plays far too often. The sufferers from

it are certainly far more to be pitied than blamed, and it is harmful

only to the afflicted themselves, so long as it meets, or still expects,

a measure of gratification. When they are permitted to reach any height

from which to look down, the terrible craving appears to be temporarily

appeased; and they become kind, and even generous, to all who look up

with willing, unwandering gaze. It is only when the sufferers fail to

reach any height, or when they lose what little they may have attained,

or when the gaze of the world wanders, that they become hard, sour,

bitter, and merciless toward all who have succeeded where they have

failed. The only mercy that Nature has shown them in their affliction,

is to make most of them slow to realize that they can never gain the one

thing they crave. And this miserable awakening had not yet come to

William Pressley. On that evening he had every reason to be content and

well pleased with himself. The future promised all that he most

earnestly wished for. He was already moderately successful in the

practice of his profession. This was mainly owing to his uncle's

influence, but he was far from suspecting the fact. His domestic life,

also, was admirably settled; he was fond of Ruth and proud of her, as he

was of everything belonging to himself. But the thing which made him

happiest was a suggestion of Philip Alston's, first offered on the

previous day; and it was to this that he now recurred at the first

opportunity.

He spoke with an eagerness curiously apart from his words:

"There seems to be no doubt that the Shawnees are really gone. Men,

women, and children, they have all disappeared from their town on the

other side of the river. A hunter who has been over there told me so

yesterday. It appears reasonably certain that the warriors are gathering

under the Prophet at Tippecanoe."

"Yes, it is undoubtedly true that the Indians are rising," replied

Philip Alston, still looking at Ruth. "Well, it was bound to come,--this

last decisive struggle between the white and the red race,--and the

sooner the better, perhaps. I hear, too, that the troops are already

moving upon the Shawnee encampment."

"Have you heard anything more about the attorney-general's offering his

services? Is it decided that he will go?" asked William Pressley.

He spoke more quickly and with more spirit than was common with him. And

he sank back with an involuntary movement of disappointment when Philip

Alston shook his head.

"However, there is little doubt that he will go. He is almost sure to,"

Philip Alston went on. "It is his way to put his own shoulder to the

wheel. You remember, judge--"

"What's that!" cried the judge, starting up from his doze.

"We are talking about Joseph Hamilton Daviess," said Philip Alston.

"A great man. A great lawyer--the first lawyer west of the Alleghanies

to go to Washington and plead a case before the Supreme Court," said the

judge.

"He has certainly been untiring and fearless in the discharge of his

duty as the United States Attorney," Philip Alston said warmly. "I was

just going to remind you of the journey that he made across the

wilderness from Kentucky to St. Louis to find out, if he could, at first

hand, what treason Aaron Burr was plotting over there with the

commandant of the military post as a tool. He didn't find out a great

deal. That old fox knows how to cover his tracks. But the

attorney-general did more than any one else could have done. He hauled

Burr to trial, almost single-handed, and against the greatest public

clamor. He leaves nothing undone in the pursuit of his duty. I

understand that he is to be here soon. He thinks that something should

be done to put down the lawlessness of this country as Andrew Jackson

has subdued it in his territory."

"But he must, of course, resign the office, if he intends going to

Tippecanoe," said William Pressley.

He was so intent upon this one point of interest to himself that he had

scarcely heard what had been said. He now turned with dignified

impatience when his aunt broke in, speaking from the hearth. Miss

Penelope always spoke with a greater or less degree of suddenness and

irrelevance. She commonly said what she had to say at the instant that

the thought occurred to her, regardless of what others might be talking

or thinking about. The tenor of nearly everything that she said was

singularly gloomy. Her mind was full of superstition of a homely,

domestic kind. She was a great believer in signs, and the signs with

which she was most familiar were usually forewarnings of some great and

mysterious public or private calamity. Her voice was remarkably soft,

low, and sweet, so that to hear these alarming threats and these

appalling prophecies uttered in the tones of a cooing dove, was very

singular indeed.

"'Pon my word!" she now exclaimed, facing the room, but still keeping

close to the coffee-pot. "How you all can expect anything but terrible

troubles and awful misfortunes is more than I can understand. The

warning of that comet sent a-flying wild across the heavens is enough

for me."