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