It is a soundless, soft December evening. The quietly falling flakes are cloaking in thin white the streets and roofs of Norfolk. Off shore, a cable’s length, an English sloop of war, eighteen guns, lies tugging at her anchors. In shore from the sloop of war rides the peaceful twenty-ton sloop of Planter Paul Jones. The sailor-planter, loitering homeward from a cruise to Charleston and the coast towns of the Carolinas, is calling on friends in Norfolk. Both the war sloop and the peace sloop seem almost deserted in the falling snow. Aside from the harbor light burning high in the rigging, and an anchor watch of two sailors muffled to the ears, the decks of neither craft show signs of life. Norfolk’s public hall is candle-lighted to a pitch of unusual brilliancy; the waxed floors are thronged with the beauty and gentility of the Old Dominion, as the same find Norfolk expression. It is indeed a mighty social occasion; for the local élite have seized upon the officers of the sloop of war, and are giving a ball in their honor. The honored ones attend to a man--which accounts for the deserted look of their sloop--and their gold lace blazes bravely by the light of the candles, and with tremendous gala effect. Planter Paul Jones is also among the guests. Since he is in town, his coming to the ball becomes the thing most natural. Already he is regarded as the Admirable Crichton, of tide-water Virginia, and the function wanting his presence would go down to history as incomplete. Paul Jones, planter for two years, has made himself a foremost figure in Virginia. Twenty-eight, cultured, travelled, gallant, brilliant, and a bachelor, he is welcome in every drawing-room. Besides, is there not the Jones plantation, with its mile of river front, its noble mansion house, its tobacco teeming acres, its well-trained slaves, and all turning in those yearly one thousand yellow guineas under the heedful managing thumb of canny Duncan Macbean? Planter Paul Jones is a prince for hospitality, too; and the high colonial dames, taking pity on his wifeless state, preside at his table, or chaperone the water parties which he gives on his great sloop. Also--still considering his wifelessness--they seek to marry him to one of their colonial daughters.