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