“I shall be here to thank him,” said William.  “Uncle need take no trouble in the matter.  I will do all that is necessary.”

A woman must be deeply in love before she likes to hear the note of ownership in a man’s voice when speaking of herself.  Ruth was not at all in love—­in that way—­although she did not yet know that she was not.  The delicate roses of her cheeks deepened suddenly to the tint of the rich red ones which she held again in her hands.  Her blue eyes darkened with revolt, and she gave William a clear, level look, throwing up her head.  Then her soft heart smote her, and her gentle spirit reproached her.  She believed William Pressley to be a good man, and she was ever ready to feel herself in the wrong.  She got up in a timid flurry and went to the door and stood a moment looking out at the sun-lit river.  Presently she quietly returned, and shyly pausing behind William’s chair, rested her hand on the back of it.  There was a timid apology in the gesture.  She was thinking only of her own shortcomings.  Had she been critical of him or even observant, she would have seen that there was something peculiarly characteristic in the very way that he handled his knife and fork; a curious, satisfied self-consciousness in the very lift of his wrists which seemed to say that this, and no other, was the correct manner of eating, and that he disapproved of everybody else’s manner.  But she saw nothing of the kind, for hers was not the poor affection that stands ever ready to pick flaws.  He did not know that she was near him until the judge spoke to her; and then he sprang to his feet at once.  He was much too fine a gentleman to keep his seat while any lady stood.  Ruth smilingly motioned him back to his chair, and going round the table, leant over the judge’s shoulder.  He had been examining a packet of legal papers, and he laid a yellow document before her, spreading it out on the table-cloth.

“You were asking the other day about the buffalo—­when they were here, and so on.  Now, listen to this old note of hand, dated the fifteenth of October, seventeen hundred and ninety-two, just nineteen years ago.  Here it is:  ’For value Rec’d, I promise to pay Peter Wilson or his Agent, twenty pounds worth of good market Buffalo Beef free from Boone, to be delivered at Red Banks on the Ohio River, or at aney other place that he or his shall salt beef on the banks of said river, and aney time in the ensuing fawl before this fawl’s hunting is over.’  There now, my dear!  That would seem to prove that there were plenty of buffalo hereabouts not long ago.  A hundred dollars in English gold must have bought a large amount of wild meat.  If this meant Virginia pounds it was still a great deal.  And the hunter who drew this note must have known how he was going to pay it.”