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, as if they had sprung out of the earth. It is also generally believed that he makes all the fine counterfeit money with which this country is flooded, and that he does the work with his own delicate, white hands. Yet not a dollar has ever been traced to him, although its regular sale goes steadily on at a fixed rate of sixteen bad dollars for one good dollar. It is generally believed, too, that he keeps his money, both the good and the bad, buried somewhere in the forest near his house, presumably for the double purpose of guarding against robbery by his tools and against surprise by the officers of the law. This, of course, is also mere speculation; nobody really knows anything about what he does. I only know that his house is a bare log hut, which is singular enough, seeing what a fine gentleman he is, and what luxury he has surrounded the girl with. But I know that to be true, because accident once took me to his house, and greater courtesy I never found anywhere, though I was not invited to come again. It is known that he owns a fleet of flatboats, and one of them is usually seen waiting near Duff's Fort when horses are stolen, and it is always gone before the dawn of the next day; but there is no proof of this, either. Boats belonging to other people have a hard time getting past Duff's Fort. More often than not, they are never seen or heard of after reaching that fatal point, and the passengers vanish off the face of the earth. That