f early manhood,
with apparently some eight and twenty years upon his head. His frame was
well proportioned, light and active. His face, though distinguished by a
smooth and almost beardless cheek, still presented an outline of decided
manly beauty. The sun and wind had tanned his complexion, except where a
rich volume of black hair upon his brow had preserved the original
fairness of a high, broad forehead. A hazel eye sparkled under the
shade of a dark lash, and indicated, by its alternate playfulness and
decision, an adventurous as well as a cheerful spirit. His whole
bearing, visage and figure, seemed to speak of one familiar with
enterprise and fond of danger:--they denoted gentle breeding
predominating over a life of toil and privation.

Notwithstanding his profession, which was seen in his erect and
peremptory carriage, his dress, at this time, was, with some slight
exceptions, merely civil. And here, touching this matter of dress, I
have a prefatory word to say to my reader. Although custom, or the
fashion of the story-telling craft, may require that I should satisfy
the antiquarian in this important circumstance of apparel of the days
gone by, yet, on the present occasion, I shall be somewhat chary of my
lore in that behalf;--seeing that any man who is curious on the score of
the costume of the revolution time, may be fully satisfied by studying
those most graphic "counterfeit presentments" of sundry historical
passages of that day, wherewith Colonel Trumbull has furnished this age,
for the edification of posterity, in the great rotunda of the Capitol of
the United States. And I confess, too, I have another reason for my
present reluctance,--as I feel some faint misgiving lest my principal
actor might run the risk of making a sorry figure with the living
generation, were I to introduce him upon the stage in a coat, whose
technical description, after the manner of a botanical formula, might
be comprised in the following summary:--long-waisted--wide-skirted--
narrow-collared--broad-backed--big-buttoned--and large-lapelled;--and
then to add to this, what would be equally outlandish, yellow
small-clothes, and dark-topped boots, attached by a leather strap to the
buttons at the knee,--without which said boots, no gentleman in 1780
ventured to mount on horseback.

But when I say that Captain Butler travelled on his present journey,
habited in the civil costume of a gentleman of the time, I do not mean
to exclude a