On the wide hearth of this great chimney a fire was always burning.  No matter what the season or the weather might be, there was always a solemn ceremony around the hearth when the fire was renewed, at the beginning and the close of every day all the year round.  In winter it was a glorious bonfire consuming great logs.  In summer it was the merest glimmer that could hold a flickering spark.  Between winter and summer, as on this mild October evening, a bright flame sometimes danced gayly behind the big brass andirons, while all the windows and doors were wide open.  But through cold and heat, and burning high or low, the fire was never entirely forgotten, never quite permitted to go out.  Thus ever alight it burned like a sacred flame on the altar of home.

Streaming from the doors and windows that night, it gave the youth and the maiden a cheerful welcome as they came up the darkening hillside.  Lamplight also began to glimmer, and candles flitted here and there before the windows and door, borne by the dark shapes of the servants who were laying the table for supper.  The main room of Cedar House opened directly upon the river front; and when brightly lighted, it could be distinctly seen from without.  Ruth and David paused on the threshold, still unconsciously holding one another’s hands, and looked in.

There were five persons in the room, three men and two women, and they were all members of the household with the exception of Philip Alston, the white-haired gentleman, whose appearance bore no other mark of age.  And he also might have been considered as one of the family, since he had been coming to the house daily for many years.  He came usually to see Ruth, but of late he had found it necessary to see William Pressley more often; and they were talking eagerly and in a low tone, rather apart, when the boy and girl paused to see and hear what was taking place within the great room.  William Pressley sat in the easiest chair in the warmest corner, close to the hearth.  There are some men—­and a few women—­who always take the softest seat in the best place, and they do it so naturally that no one ever thinks of their doing anything else or expects them to sit elsewhere.  William Pressley was one of these persons.  In the next easiest chair, on the other side of the hearth, was his aunt, the widow Broadnax, whose short, broad, shapeless, inert figure was lying rather than sitting almost buried in a heap of cushions.  This lady was the sister of the judge and the half-sister of the other lady, Miss Penelope Knox,—­the thin, nervous, restless little old woman,—­who was fidgeting back and forth between the hearth and the doorway leading to the distant kitchen.  The relationship of these two ladies to one another, and the difference in their relationship to the head of Cedar House, caused much dissension in the household, and gave rise to certain domestic complications which always rose when least expected.