“Ah, you don’t know much about Philip Alston.  You have met him only once—­yet that must have made you feel the wonderful charm of the man, his singular power.  You have seen how he looks,” laughing at some recollection.  “Sometimes when he has talked to me, looking me straight in the face with his clear, soft, gentle, blue eyes, I have doubted everything that I ever had heard against him.  Things that I know to a moral certainty to be true seemed a monstrous slander.  You must have felt something of this, though you have seen him but once; and the more frequently you meet him the more you will feel it.  The power of the man is past words and past understanding.  Did you know that he once held a high office under Spain?  Oh, yes, for years he controlled the arrogant, treacherous, local government of Spain as absolutely as he controls the simple family of Cedar House.  He was living in Natchez then, and was apparently a very devout Catholic, too, about this time.  But the church which he attended was mysteriously robbed; its altar was stripped of everything precious,—­gold, jewels, paintings,—­when none but himself had had access to the church unobserved.  That is the story.  I do not vouch for its truth.  There was no evidence against him—­only suspicions in this as in everything else.  It was shortly afterward that he suddenly appeared in this country a stanch Protestant; and then almost immediately the present reign of crime began.  Yet he has never been seen in the company of any known law-breakers.  Many mysterious visitors are said to come to his house over the Wilderness Road, and to go as mysteriously as they come.  But no one claims to know who or what they are, where they come from, or where they go.  It is said that these men who carry out his orders hardly know him by sight, that he sees only the leaders, and that they never dare go to his house unless they are sent for.  It is believed that he rarely goes into detail, and does not wish to know what they do in carrying out his wishes.  It is said that he is sickened by the slightest mention of bloodshed or cruelty, like any delicate, sensitive woman, but is perfectly indifferent to all sorts of atrocity that go on out of his sight and knowledge.  There is, indeed, a general opinion that he actually does not know half of the time what his tools are guilty of; that he purposely avoids knowing.  I have heard it said that the boldest of the band would no more venture to tell him of the crimes they commit while executing orders, than he would put his head in a lion’s mouth.  It is understood that Alston simply points to a thing when he wants it done, leaving all shocking details to his tools.  But this is mere hearsay.  No one really knows anything about him; that is to say, no one outside his band—­if he actually has one.  It is very generally believed, however, that he has only to blow a single blast on a horn at any hour of the day or night, and that from fifty to a hundred armed men will instantly appear,