ook it down from its peg behind his cabin door and eyed it
with new dissatisfaction. Fashions were changing in the wilderness.
Gentlemen no longer clothed themselves in the skins of wild beasts, nor
even in the coarse homespun. Not many, to be sure, were dressed like
Philip Alston; but David had lately seen Mr. Audubon hunting in velvet
knee-breeches and white silk stockings, with fine ruffles over his
hands. That gentleman had laughed at himself for doing it, but the sight
had pleased the boy's taste and gratified his craving for everything
refined and beautiful. It humiliated him to have no choice between the
shabby homespun and the fantastic buckskin. But he tried to find comfort
in thinking that he would have a boughten suit before very long. The
judge had given him a calf. The master of Cedar House was always kind
when he did not forget, as has already been said, and he was most
generous at all times. The calf was now ready for sale to the first
passing buyer of cattle. Nevertheless, David sighed as he put on the
buckskin suit, wishing, as only the young can wish for what they desire,
that he had the boughten suit then to wear to the dance in the forest.

Yet Ruth smiled at him as if she were well pleased with his looks. There
were, to be sure, certain tangles in the gay fringes for her deft
fingers to untangle. There were, of course, many swift little touches to
be given here and there, the caressing touches that no true woman can
withhold from the dress of a man whom she is fond of. So that David's
buckskin suit suddenly seemed to him just what it should be--as all that
a man wears or has or is always does seem, when a woman's caressing
touches have convinced him that everything is right. Indeed, David
forgot to think any more of his own clothes or of himself. Looking at
Ruth he thought only of her.

He did not know what it was that she wore. He did not know that the
muslin of her dress had cost an hundred francs the yard. He did not know
how charmingly odd the mode of its make was, since Ruth's little hands
had planned it out of her own pretty head in enchanting ignorance of the
fashion. He knew nothing of the value of the three-cornered kerchief of
white lace which tied down her gypsy hat. He did not notice that the
flowers on her hat were primroses, or that the long gloves meeting the
short sleeves and the slender little slippers peeping from beneath her
skirt, were both of the finest primrose kid. He saw only