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;