him.  Everything—­or almost everything—­was to be said in his praise.  The open fact that he thought all this himself would be nothing against him with Ruth.  A man’s faith in himself is indeed often the chief cause of a woman’s faith in him.  No one knew this better than Philip Alston.  As he looked at William that day, a new feeling of peace came into his perturbed breast.  He was beginning to be disheartened by unexpected opposition to his plan to have the young lawyer appointed to the office of attorney-general.  Had he been closer in touch with the governor, he would have known that all his efforts were useless, for the office was held by appointment in those days, and not by election as it is now.  But it was a long way to the state capital on horseback, and he had seen no newspapers, so that he knew nothing positively, and was only beginning to fear.  And thinking about the uncertainty, he was encouraged to feel that even failure in this would not alter his belief that the marriage was the best Ruth could make.  There was something purely unselfish in the content that he felt.  With clouds lowering around his own head, it comforted him to feel that her future would be safe whatever came.  He smiled at her, shaking his head when she asked if he had heard any news, and drew her down by his side.  At the first opportunity he must ask about Sister Angela’s progress with the wedding clothes.  It was not long now till Christmas Eve, and he wanted to hear more about the preparations for the marriage.  These had seemed to lag of late.

* * * * *

The blood-red sun went down behind threatening clouds on that terrible day, and the second morning came in with a wintry storm of icy winds and swirling snow.  Then followed two more gloomy, gray days and two more wild, black nights.  The fifth day dawned still wilder and darker, but Paul Colbert found strength to go away.  On the sixth it seemed to Ruth that her heart would break with its aching for his absence; and with the sadness that came from listening to a sobbing wind which sighed despairingly through the naked forest; and with watching a melancholy rain which hung a dark curtain between Cedar House and the other side of the river.  And thus the dreadful time dragged on into the seventh endless day, and still there was no news from Tippecanoe.  A courier could have brought it in a few hours by riding fast through the wide, trackless wilderness, and swimming broad, unbridged rivers.  But no couriers came toward Cedar House.  There was no reason for sending a special messenger to a corner of one state when the whole nation was clamoring to hear.  So that the couriers were speeding with all possible haste toward the National Capital, and the people of Cedar House could only wait and watch like those who were much farther off.