From out the town the mico and headmen had come to greet him when as

their heralded guest he had approached. With white swans’ wings they

had gently stroked his face on either side a hundred times or more

as he entered the public square; they had placed him beside the mico

on the great white seat of the chief’s council-room, _mic-ul-gee

in-too-pau_; they had smoked with him the friend-pipe, and the

cacina was brewed. Now and again sudden peals of thunder shook the

earth, and the yellow lightnings illumined the dreary gray stretches

of the forest and cloud and river and the humble little town, all

crouching, as it were, amidst these harbingers of the wrath of the

great elements.

So confident, so thoroughly at ease was Laroche that he could

not afterward remember when those vague _indicia_ of mental

disquietude first became perceptible in the manner of the mico Padgee

(the Pigeon). The French officer had known that this chief entertained

doubts as to the policy of an intertribal peace, as a constructive

constraint upon the powers and independence of the Creek Confederacy.

Laroche’s mission to Hurricane Town was partly to set at rest these

doubts and to present in contrast the great advantages which the

Muscogees would secure in the aid of all the tribal forces against

the English. Only united strength and united action could avail aught

against British encroachment. The national heads of the Muscogee

Confederacy had formally acceded to this view, but Padgee was a man

of influence, and his unreserved support was desired. A scrupulous

heed the mico seemed to give to Laroche’s talk of the advantages of

the great Indian coalition, which was to be the subject of official

discussion on the morrow upon the arrival of two other chiefs of the

vicinity, whose wavering allegiance he desired to confirm by personal

influence. Padgee seemed to ponder in dubitation upon every head of the

discourse when, the ceremonies of welcome concluded, the two talked

the matter over as they sat apart in the great assembly rotunda. Once

the Indian said that the plan of Iberville many years ago was not then

new. The Muscogee was a union of many adoptive tribes, the great Creek

Confederacy, long before Iberville’s idea of the force of a united

people was ever promulgated. It was the Creek policy,--absorption and

consolidation. It was also the policy of the Six Nations, the Long

House.

“It is unique and new in its aims and power,” Laroche argued, “the

union of all the tribes for common aggression and common defense, to

maintain aboriginal independence against European intrusion; whereas

the scheme of the Creek Confederacy was to protect Creek interests

only.”

Padgee made haste to nod his feathered head with a mutter of

acquiescence; then he fixed his eyes attentively upon the circling

figures of the tadpole dance, _Toc-co-yula-gau_, performed by four

Indian braves and four squaws on the hard-trodden floor of the great

assembly rotunda. The shadows duplicated their feathered heads upon the

red painted earthen walls, and beyond the mad whirl of substance and

semblance Laroche could look forth through the great portal opposite

and see the night lowering, purple and black, and note how the storm

gathered and bided its time, while the yellow lightnings now and again

keenly flashed. He began to fancy that some deft hand had sown seeds

of dissatisfaction more formidable in their upspringing than dragon’s

teeth. He was sure some English suggestion had drawn the parallel

between the limited policy of the Creek Confederacy and the universal

brotherhood promised by the union of all tribes. Still more definite

was the echo of an intrusive voice in the councils when Padgee opined,

with many an involution, that he loved old times and old ideas best.

Said they of earlier years,--wiser than the men of to-day,--that it

was well that the British and French should fight each other. Thus the

Muscogees between, courted by both, had much peace--except when it

pleased them to conquer and absorb smaller tribes.

This was impossible now, Laroche argued, since the Cherokees had joined

fortunes once and for all with the French, who also commanded the

Choctaw allegiance. The Muscogees could not alone maintain neutrality.

He spoke sharply, and then checked himself that he should be so

definitely nettled. Hurricane Town was at best inconsiderable. Padgee

was not a representative man. To-morrow would bring the important

chiefs whose suspected dissatisfaction could be obviated by conceding

their reasonable desires. This was no official occasion, and Padgee

doubtless was taking advantage of the _tête-à-tête_ to bring

forward his discontents that he might be remembered when lubricating

presents were in order, to make the project run the more smoothly. He

was obviously talking to hear himself talk! Nevertheless, Laroche was

conscious of an increase of impatience when the voice of Padgee, more

like a hawk than a dove, was once more rising on the air with a queer

blending of plaint and discontent and apology.

He meant no harm, said Padgee. He loved the officer of the great French

king like a brother. But the British goods were well named, being good!

And he sighed, as being loath to relinquish the values of a trade so

long enjoyed.

Floutingly, as if he hardly cared to reply at all, Laroche averred that

French merchandise was famous for its quality all the world over, and

more than that, it was cheap.

Once more Padgee caught himself and protested that it was not for him

to say; the Creek national headmen would decide the question.

“They _have_ decided it long ago,” Laroche interrupted him.

Certainly, Padgee was aware of that, but he felt the loss.

_O-tel-you-yau-nau_ (Hurricane Town) had been a favorite stand of

the British traders in times past, and the people loved them.

The long serpentine lines of the lighted cane burning upon the floor

were growing dim, flickering, dying out gradually. The dreary night

without in the quick keen flashes of the lightning was brighter, more

distinct, than the dome-shaped rotunda sinking into shadow. The dance

was over, the place nearly empty of people. Laroche rose suddenly with

a more indubitable monition of treachery. He looked about him for his

Cherokee bodyguard. Secure among friends, he had dismissed them to

enjoy the hospitalities and return the courtesies of their coadjutors

of the new alliance. Padgee, noting the movement, rose too, speaking

very rapidly, as if there were scant time to be lost, while the great

spaces of the _chooc-ofau-thluc-co_ darkened yet more duskily

and the vague lights of the cane trembled to extinction. Outside, the

lightning unsheathed its vivid blades, flashing athwart the sky, and

the thunder pealed and burst explosively and rolled away, muttering, to

the further hills.

It was a long time, said Padgee plaintively, since a British trader had

been able to ply his kind and beneficent vocation in Hurricane Town for

fear of the martial French at Fort Toulouse; and since the French sent

no traders to the villages, save now and then a mere peddler, slipping

back and forth from his fort, afraid of his shadow, the Indians of

Hurricane Town were often utterly destitute of all those artificial

supplies which they needed, so civilized had they come to be. They were

fit to die of shame should any one observe how far behind the fashion

of the day had they trailed. Only very recently a Chickasaw chief had

come to Hurricane Town in a splendid embroidered suit from a British

trader, and he, the great mico, Padgee, had naught in which to meet him

that was of European manufacture but a cocked hat and a pair of silver

shoe buckles.

He paused impressively. Doubtless he felt, as one might say in the

artistic jargon of this day, that these articles did not “compose well”

with the rest of his attire, a shirt of bead-wrought buckskin and

leggings decorated with turkey-cock spurs and fawn’s trotters. Laroche

made no reply. Somehow the crisis tingled in his nerves like some

electrical current before the event was precipitated.

Therefore, Padgee resumed very swiftly, some folk of a town far off--he

could not just say where--had come up to-night to meet the great French

officer and--confer with him concerning the condition of the British

trade.

Laroche turned upon him.

“Padgee!” he exclaimed, “is this well? I have eaten your bread, I have

eaten your salt!”

The mico hesitated at the last moment, but half hearted in his deceit.

Perhaps the appeal to the sanctions of his rude hospitality might have

availed even now, but its force was abrogated by the possibilities. The

British soldiers awaited no longer the preconcerted signal. Military

figures, barely distinguishable in the gloom from other shadows of

the darksome place, were climbing down from behind the tiers of seats

of the primitive amphitheatre; and although one, “the Sinner,” lost

his footing and fell rolling down the descent with great thumps, the

Highlander was upon Laroche so quickly, so powerfully, that his strong

hand stifled the cry for help.

It was managed with infinite address and secrecy, for the two British

soldiers would have fallen victims to their own temerity had they dared

to show themselves openly and alone, among the Indians, if unprotected

and at their mercy. As to the Choctaw, the mere revelation of his

personality, with a price upon his head, would have meant his death.

Therefore Padgee, armed with his authority as mico, headed the guard

of Muscogee braves, his own attendants, whom he designed to send with

the captors to Fort Prince George, and accompanied them several miles

on the return march. As he had long been inimical to the coalition

so earnestly advocated by the French, this fact was the reason that

Laroche had appointed Hurricane Town as the rendezvous of the lukewarm,

that he might be sure of gaining the ear of Padgee and confirming his

allegiance by argument and the example of others. It had needed but a

word from Push-koosh to acquaint Captain Howard with this important

circumstance, and the British officer in treating with the chief of

Hurricane Town had held out prospects of high advancement. Thereafter

Padgee had no need to complain of the lack of gold and European gewgaws

when visited by strangers; in fact, he was in case to disport himself

with a pride in apparel that might better befit a peacock than the

humble pigeon whose name he bore.

When the populace outside of the rotunda learned that the great

French “beloved man” had been arrested mysteriously in the British

interest, they received the news with a wild outcry of despair and

muttered threats and even efforts at rescue. More than one, especially

in the neighboring towns, suspected that the indifference of Padgee

to the success of the French schemes might have contributed to the

catastrophe, but none dreamed that the hospitality of Hurricane Town

had been violated, that Padgee had renounced the guest within the gates

and delivered him up to his enemies, to be dragged away by force to a

cruel doom. Hours had passed--indeed it was near day--before the news

transpired, and although the Cherokee bodyguard set out at once upon

the trail of the captors, they soon found that time itself could not

overtake the party. For themselves they were few, unprepared, in a

country bristling with hostile conditions, for the commandant at Fort

Toulouse, as soon as apprised of the catastrophe, sent out a detachment

to attempt a rescue, and the Cherokees feared to be held accountable

for the capture of the French officer as for a lapse of vigilance. They

therefore relinquished the effort, took moodily to their boat, refusing

the tearful condolences of Hurricane Town, and pulled up the Flint

River again, lamenting loudly all the way, to the Cherokee country.

What thoughts came to Laroche that stormy night as he half toiled and

was half dragged among his captors through the tangled ways of the

wilderness! A thousand vain regrets tortured him. The recapitulation

of events that might have been ordered otherwise trailed in long

sequences through his mind. A vision constantly recurred of a result

so different, seeming so real, that only a slight wrench of will would

be requisite to tear him from this oppressive dream which surely must

needs presently dissolve in obvious fact.

Nevertheless his intellectual faculties, heedful of cause and effect,

perceived that the flight was ordered with a craft that bade fair

to eliminate all chance of rescue or escape. That they should take

their way to the north or diagonally across Georgia was so obviously

their proper policy that Padgee turned their steps directly to the

south, whence none would dream of following. To increase the distance

more effectually and obliterate the traces of their passage through

the country, he availed himself of his own boat, hidden among the

saw-grass of the marshy borders of a neighboring watercourse, down

which they rowed and drifted out of all calculations of pursuit. Indeed

this deviation took them so far to the south that they could discern

the tang of salt water on the breeze, and hear the voice of the surf

singing the iterative song of the sea. Only then did they disembark and

take up the line of march toward the Savannah River once more.

Their progress was infinitely laborious; the weather had clouded,

and rain filled the marshes and overflowed the streams. Often a fire

was impracticable, and without shelter, short of food, in terror of

capture, and now and again endangered by faction, the sufferings of the

captors were hardly discounted by the anguish of the prisoner. Only

once did a chance of escape present itself.

Laroche had observed that the Highlander, now taking command of the

party, according to his orders, studiously prevented any opportunity

for the prisoner to speak apart with any single individual. MacIlvesty

had of course disarmed Laroche and taken from him all such valuables

as might tempt the integrity of the others.

“Is this a’ your gowd?” he asked.

“Untie my hands and receive my parole, or else run your own risks,”

retorted the French officer.

“An’ fine wad I like to do that, but it is contrary to my orders,” said

Callum kindly, “sae I maun e’en look to you mysel’.”

This he did with a vigilance that showed no possibility of relaxation

till one stormy night when they gained once more the banks of the

Savannah River and found their further progress barred; for their boat,

left there, to serve their return, had vanished.

It was near dawn when they made this discovery. The rain had ceased

at last, though the clouds were still scudding through the gusty

sky. A late waning moon showed in the east, infinitely melancholy in

the cloud-rack of the tempest. The simple voices of the denizens of

the swamp, overawed to silence by the violence of the storm, resumed

their vague indiscriminate nocturne, the shrilling of a screech-owl,

at intervals the noisy clangor of cranes, and once the bloodcurdling

scream, of a catamount. The party had halted on the crest of a ridge

overlooking the swollen watercourse, lashed to a swifter current

by the turbulence of the wind. The boat, which they had left with

every security in this solitary place, had been yet more definitely

concealed. A tricksy gust had upset it, and in the glimmering light, as

it floated bottom upward, it was not recognized.

As the two British soldiers patroled the banks, and now consulted

together, and again hastily resumed the search, Push-koosh, standing

near the prisoner, looking backward over his shoulder again and again,

murmured against this loss of time. Then once more he scanned the

woodsy track by which they had come, all glistening with moisture,

and illumined by the drear light of the waning moon. He so obviously

feared a rescue, that Laroche’s heart could but plunge at the prospect.

A heron cried out dismally from the dense cane and marshy tangles

beside the river, attesting the solitude. If but the rope that bound

his hands were cut! The two men on the margin below passed the boat and

repassed it, as held by its sheet-chain tangled about the submerged

roots of a tree, its capsized bottom seemed but a boulder washed by

the ripples as it lay in the shadow. As once more Push-koosh glanced

warily, impatiently, over his shoulder, Laroche suddenly bethought

himself of the peculiarities of his character and the details of their

long service together. There was no mistaking his identity,--it was

sufficiently attested by the contour of his head, with the silver band

on his flat forehead, the red flamingo feathers all tipped with silver

by the moon, and the beautiful tones of his velvet voice as he muttered

his Choctaw imprecations.

“Ah, Push-koosh,” cried Laroche softly, a vibration of hope and joy

in his tone, “_mon Bébé, mon petit chou! Je reconnais bien ton bon

cœur._”

Push-koosh turned instantly and looked straight at the French officer.

The moonlight was full in the Indian’s dark inscrutable eyes.

“There is gold in the bottom of my tobacco bag, Prince Baby,--much

gold. Cut this rope and it is yours!”

An instant of doubt, and then the Choctaw approached with that sly

supple motion so like the step of a catamount. One stroke of his knife

and Laroche would be free to flee through the marshy forests, while the

two British soldiers and the Muscogee tribesmen hunted for the boat

that was before their eyes, and wrangled till the echoes were loud and

discordant.

The Choctaw’s touch was laid, not upon the pouch with its treasure

amidst the tobacco that had escaped the search of the Highlander, but

upon the bound hands held out to him with a piteous eagerness of

entreaty. Then looking the captive directly in the eye, Push-koosh

said with an indescribable fullness of significant reminder, “_Eho

chookoma!_” (the beautiful woman!)

XX

THE snow lay deep at Fort Prince George when they returned.[12] The air

was now clear of flakes, invested with that strange absolute funereal

stillness characteristic of the muffled world, but the sky was still

darkly gray and with a menace in its motionless solemnity. The roofs

of the block-houses and barracks showed densely white against the

slate-colored clouds; not even about the great smoking chimneys was a

trace of thaw. The palisades that surmounted the unbroken white walls

of the rampart upheld fluffy drifts lodged among the sharp-pointed

stakes. The glacis was only such a faint outline as might remain in

vague traces of a prehistoric work. The prickly branches of a strong

abatis on two sides of the fort thrust out darkly from the overwhelming

banks like the protest of a buried forest. The thousand stumps, relics

of the encampment of Colonel Grant’s army here the preceding year, were

utterly submerged, and gave more than one of the approaching party a

headlong fall as the two British soldiers, the Choctaw Mingo, and the

Muscogee guard, with their prisoner, all half frozen, dead beat, and

nearly starved, came within view from the gates. The ditch was half

full of ice, solid as a rock, but the heart of the sentry was all aglow

to behold them at a distance, and his jubilant call, “Corporal of the

guard!” reached them as they struggled across the intervening spaces

with the grateful realization that they were not to be kept waiting for

identification, while the last resources of endurance gave way at the

moment of rescue and the portal of refuge.

A clangor of weapons, keen and clear on the icy air, the tramp of

marching feet, the glitter of steel and scarlet cloth, came to them

through the great gate, following hard on the cry to turn out the

guard. In less than five minutes the red glow of great fires, ardent

spirits unsparingly administered, hot food, and the comforts of

beds and blankets invested the recollection of the struggle through

the snow, the tramp of more than two hundred miles, the dangers and

vicissitudes of the journey with a certain unreality, seeming rather

something they had wildly dreamed, were it not for the testimony of

each to reinforce the memory of the others.

Exhaustion limited their capacity for expression, but the whole fort

rejoiced in their stead. The news flew abroad like the flocks of

snowbirds all undaunted by the temperature. The tale of the notable

capture was told over and again in the guardroom, in the officers’

mess-room, in the barracks, and the farrier’s smithy; over the making

of the clumsy cartridges of that day for the little cannon on the

bastions, and around the mending of guns in the armorer’s forge; in the

wigwams of the Indian hunters and camp followers of whatever sort whose

temporary habitations were on the outside of the works; in the Cherokee

town of Keowee, hard by, and at Jock Lesly’s trading-house. Even down

into the depths of the earth to the Scotchman’s subterranean ingle-neuk

it penetrated, and there it found Lilias sitting on a buffalo rug

before the red fire, her hands clasped tightly, her eyes wildly

dilated, pale to the lips, and with her heart fluttering frantically,

painfully, hopelessly, like one of the many birds perishing without,

whose wings, swift though they were, had beat futilely against the

infinite forces of destiny embodied in the storm; for she--and she

only--saw aught beyond cause of gratulation in the capture of the

turbulent French emissary, the destroyer of the peace of the frontier,

the arch-plotter, the organizer of Indian armies, the reconciler of

Indian feuds, the confederator of all Indian tribes into one great

united, potent structure of government financed and armed through

Spanish and French aid, before which British colonial occupation could

hardly stand for a day.

“Callum took the man! It was Callum, and he maun hae the credit!” Jock

Lesly jubilantly declared as he sat rubbing his hands by the fire, his

snowy match-coat sending up a steam as the drifts melted from it, for

he was just returned from the fort. “Captain Howard is as gleg as a

grig! He hae won his majority by this bit o’ wark, I mak nae dout!”

“What will be the Frenchman’s name?” demanded Lilias, her lips dry as

she stared, dismayed, startled, forlorn, into the fire.

“A-weel--a-weel--hinny, and that’s the curious part of it! It’s that

Tam Wilson, the loon we nursed clear of the fever! And I misdoubts it’s

misprision o’ treason, or some o’ thae unchancy crimes--only we kenned

naught aboot him!” And Jock Lesly’s rich rollicking laughter filled the

room.

“He helped us out o’ the kentry, an’ kep’ Moy Toy frae takin’ our

scalps!” she replied reproachfully.

Jock Lesly paused to look down at her gravely, his big eyes round.

“Hout, fie!” he ejaculated. “Ony French chiel protect _me_! An’

frae auld Moy Toy, that I have foregathered wi’ ever since the kentry

was built! Mair likely he spirited up the chief to trouble us an’

to burn my tradin’-house an’ a’ my gear! It seems to me I jaloosed

su’thin’ o’ the sort at ane time! Na, na, Lilias; if he helped us at

a’, it was lest our murder hurt the French interest an’ set the British

at the Injuns afore the chiels were ready for their bluidy wark.”

She gazed, deeply serious, at the fire. She too thought this more than

likely, in the light of what she had known earlier, and knew more

certainly now. She gave a long sigh of pity for the captive; but these

were the fortunes of war that every soldier must needs risk, and with

which women had no concern.

“Na, bairn, na!” her father boasted. “Auld Jock Lesly can tak care o’

his ain, an’ hae dune it this mony a day! He needna hae Tam Wilson

cluttered up wi’ heed o’ him an’ his! But, lass!” he broke into a roar

of jovial laughter, “to see up yon at the fort the major--hegh, sirs,

it’s for luck that I suld sae miscall the captain--ter see him gloat

ower Everard. He canna be quit o’ glorifying that he tuk him in sae

hard a measure when Everard had him like a bird in a trap.”

“What for did Lieutenant Everard let him slip?” she asked, turning her

head upward to look at her father’s face.

“A fule needs no reason, lass, for bein’ a fule, but he wadna believe

Callum, because the lad could urge naething except that the man spoke

French--which Callum himsel’ can do, though that wad never prove him a

toad.”

“An’ how is it that this captain was sae muckle wiser?” persisted

Lilias. “Lieutenant Everard is a finer lookin’ man than Captain Howard,

an’ his hair curls amaist as weel as mine.”

“Oh, ho!” shouted Jock Lesly, smiting his thigh in the fervor of his

relish, “that only proves he has the better thatch, not the bigger

house! A-weel, now--a-weel--ilka man suld hae his due! ’Twas not

till lately--an’ Lieutenant Everard was gone--that Callum learned

for _sure_ that the man is French,--for you see the fallow

himsel’,--and he is a fule too, for all his hair curls,--he tauld a

woman that he is French and gave her his name and employ, and the woman

tauld Callum! My certie, in ilka mischief there’s aye a woman at wark!”

Then with a changed note, “Hegh, Lilias!” he exclaimed sharply.

For Lilias, screaming, had sprung to her feet. It was she--and she saw

it now--who had delivered him bound and helpless into the hands of

his enemy! She cared not for him now as Tam Wilson, but for the awful

responsibility she had taken. Her habitual candor was beaten back

upon her lips by the untoward effects of her recent disclosure. She

restrained with difficulty the child-like impulse to reveal the mystery

to her father, who was alarmed, amazed, agitated. She protested that

the fire had burned her, flinging out a spark, and demanded peevishly

why he must needs be always sending such crackling and splitting

varieties of wood to their hearth in the cave-house. With wisps of his

frowzy light hair falling over his florid face as he bent his head,

he was presently stepping about to find the blazing splinter in the

buffalo rug, and although he now and again desisted, with the comment

“A-weel, it will no set _this_ biggin’ in a low!” he shortly, with

the force of habit, commenced the search anew.

It was the custom of Lilias to avoid the trading-house, for she was

more fastidious and exacting than her simple opportunities might seem

to imply. But Jock Lesly was by no means poor, and it had been his

delight to lavish such luxuries as in his limited apprehension he

accounted desirable upon his only child, and thus she had been reared

in a degree beyond her station. To-day, however, she was here, there,

and everywhere, listening to the loud jocular comments of a few of

the soldiers from the fort, who were now and again in the store and

disposed to talk of the capture. The transition thence was obviously

to gossip about the prisoner. A hearty, well-favored lad he was, so

they understood from the detail that had captured him. He had given

them little trouble, and they liked him well. He was a proper lad and

active afoot, and bore the hardships of the march finely. They hardly

knew what to do with him at the fort till he could be sent forward to

Charlestown. They thought Captain Howard himself was puzzled as to the

method of his disposition. Certainly,--in reply to a question from

Jock Lesly,--military prisoners, that is, French officers, had been

in times past kept in the hospital, and giving their parole had been

permitted occasionally the freedom of the parade ground. This fellow,

however, was captured out of uniform and without ostensible military

employ, and would be held as a civil prisoner, though they had him

now hard and fast in the guard-house. The talk of peace negotiations

with France would do him no good,--the stirrer-up of savages on the

frontier, just subdued by the English at so great a cost of blood and

treasure, and at peace with the colonies, would never lack for a charge

in Charlestown that would stick. He would be accused of murders, and of

the instigation of those massacres that had already violated the peace

negotiated with the Cherokees. And then one of the soldiers passed his

hand across his throat with an ugly gesture, rolled up his eyes with a

leer, and gave a click of the tongue inexpressibly loathsome, at which,

unaccountably, they all laughed.

Lilias, hovering about among the swaying fabrics depending from the

beams, turned sick and faint. She it was who had done this, in her

foolish inadvertence thinking that all was now known to Callum,--she,

who had the man’s secret that she had promised never to tell--nay, he

had voluntarily trusted himself to her honor!

Her face was drawn and white. The chill of the day was in her heart. As

one of the Indians whisked a hand mirror into which he was gazing with

gurgling rapture at his hideous countenance, she caught sight of her

own reflection, so wan, so appealing, so agonized, that she braced her

nerves anew that her face might not betray her grief, although she felt

at the end and hoped naught.

A number of the braves of the Muscogee escort who had participated

in the march subsequent to the capture of the prisoner had repaired,

although exhausted and half drunk, to the trading-house as inevitably

as the needle to the pole, and were engaged in delightedly rummaging

such of its trifles as were accessible. They were meeting with special

welcome at Fort Prince George, at the officers’ quarters, the barracks,

the kitchen, the trading-house being generously treated, their

services having proved available in so serious an emergency. Naturally

with such subjects, their instinct was to impose upon this disposition,

and to magnify the obligations it betokened.

“Haud a care, Dougal,” Jock Lesly charged the under-trader. “Thae

chiels covet ilka bawbee’s worth in the house, an’ Providence

permittin’ I suld like fine to save the roof!”

Perhaps it was this absorption that caused him to be more oblivious of

Lilias to-day than usual, though even in its midst he had a heedful

notice of her. “Hegh, lass,” he stopped her once in passing, “but ye

hae a’ the snaw in your face the day, an’ your bonny blue e’en are a

wee dreary. I misdoots the climate here wi’ a’ its changes an’ cantrips

isna suited to ye like Charlestoun. Gae doun to the fire in the ha’

house; it’s warmer there.”

When she quitted the trading-house he did not know. She was all alone,

attended only by the old collie, who would not be driven back, although

she childishly pinched his ears and pulled his tail and put him to all

the pain she could. Her visit to the fort was a very distinct surprise

to Captain Howard and contravened his impressions of her hitherto.

Being a man of about forty-five years of age, and having daughters of

his own far away, he entertained rather strict ideas of the becoming

in maidenly conduct. It may have been her own natural dignity, or the

arrogance of a girl reared beyond her station, or the indifference of

one perceiving the raw material of suitors apparently inexhaustible

in the garrisons of the frontier, but she had been hitherto somewhat

unapproachable by the men at the post, averse to those of the ruder

social level of her father’s daughter, and suspicious and cold to

those above. Therefore when she cast upon Captain Howard a smile, the

radiance of which might have thawed out all Fort Prince George, he was

mystified and expectant.

Her first words, however, put him at ease as he sat at the table in the

orderly room with an ensign opposite and two or three noncommissioned

officers with their reports standing at attention.

“I’m fu’ glad to catchit you at your wark, Captain,” she said with her

most dulcet intonation, swaying the half open door, and looking against

the snowy expanse of the parade without like some clear fine painting

on a pearly surface. “I wad like ill to harry ye out o’ your hour o’

ease, wi’ a’ thae bodies,” she glanced about at the orderlies and the

sentry and a squad of men outside, “to weigh sae heavy on your mind.”

She hesitated as she stood in her puce-colored serge skirt, from which

the snow dripped, a heavy red rokelay thrown around her, and one of

those “screens,” half shawl, half veil, worn by women in the lowlands

as well as the highlands of Scotland, brought over her head in the

muffling manner usual in wintry weather. Beneath its loosened folds

her golden hair, her pink and white dimpled face, her glittering teeth

and red lips, showed captivatingly, and Captain Howard must have been

something more than military and human had he not offered her a chair.

“I canna sit, for I hinna a moment,” she replied, but she came toward

the fire, and an orderly, mindful of the blast, promptly shut the

door as she relinquished her hold upon it. “I wad hae sent somebody,

but thae chiels of Injuns are fair crowding out the packmen at the

trading-house, and my daddy winna spare a man to leave there till the

Muscogees are far awa’--twal mile or more.”

Her eyes twinkled alluringly, in ridicule of auld Jock’s thrifty bent,

and Captain Howard smiled responsively.

“Sae fur the lack of a better messenger I maun e’en do my ain errand.

You see, Captain,”--she leaned against the back of a chair, and he

opposite, having taken a seat with the anticipation of her acceptance

of his proffer, gazed at her expectantly,--“the soldiers are making

much o’ Callum, an’ my daddy is looking after the Muscogees, an’ I was

minded to consider that naebody is like to care much for the prisoner.

So knowin’ you hinna too much beddin’ gear at the fort, an’ the weather

bein’ freakish cauld, I thought I wad roll up a blanket or twa an’ some

furs for the creatur’s bed.”

He was surprised for a moment, vaguely suspicious, doubtful.

“Just for a loan, ye maun understand,” she stipulated primly. “When the

weather breaks I sall look to hae them a’ again.”

This thrifty afterthought was so characteristic of Jock Lesly and his

household that the officer’s mind instantly cleared. He remembered

previous instances of such thoughtfulness on her part, but manifested

then toward the hospital. Indeed in a passing illness he had himself

been the pleased recipient of wine whey, arrowroot gruel, mulled port,

chocolate, and calves’ foot jelly.

He hastened to express his appreciation of the timeliness of her

offering. “The usual arrangements are somewhat scant for such weather,

and I have no doubt it is needed. The guard-house prison has no fire,

and it must be pretty chilly there, though there is a great chimney in

the next room.”

“Will ye no look at the gear?” She produced from under her cloak a

bundle compactly made up, from the edges of which otter fur showed.

The officer politely waived the precaution.

“Not at all necessary.” Then somewhat wearied with these details, which

the fairest face could not commend for indefinite contemplation,--at

least to one having attained forty-five years,--“Will you be so good as

to give them to the orderly? Nevins, take them to the guard-house.”

But Lilias, turning upon the advancing soldier, clasped her bundle in a

closer clutch. “I’m no sae clear that the prisoner-body will e’er see

them--an’ sall I get them a’ again? Thae bit duds are unco gude,” she

added, as if loath to part from them.

The soldier reddened to the eyebrows under this imputation, and the

officer, disillusioned of his admiration by this crafty, untimely,

ignoble, unfounded suspiciousness, sought to rid himself of the whole

affair.

“Take them yourself to the prisoner, then, and count them before

leaving them, so that you may be sure of having them all returned.

Baker, see to it that the sentry at the guard-house passes her.”

As she went out, “‘Aye be getting and aye be having,’” he quoted, “a

chip of the old block.” He said this as if to himself, but aloud,

partly to assuage the lacerated feelings of the man whom he had called

Nevins, and as if her suspiciousness were not a personal flout, but

merely appertained to the cautious thrift of her canny Scotch nature.

The guard had turned out upon the advance from the woods of a

considerable body of Indians, who, however, proved to be only

neighboring tribesmen without organization, but eager and curious

concerning the excitements at the fort, of which they had heard in the

adjacent Cherokee town of Keowee. They were not to be permitted to

enter, as they evidently desired, but their pertinacity to this end

detained the officer of the guard for a few minutes, while he sought

to pacify them by giving them authentic details on those points about

which they were most inquisitive. Meantime the guard, lined up, stood

in a glittering rank of scarlet and steel on the snowy spaces just in

front of the gate.

The guardroom was thus empty when Lilias, admitted by the sentry at the

outer door of the building, made her way with hasty, disordered steps

through the apartment. She hesitated at the inner door for an instant,

not recognizing the beating of her own heart, which at first she

mistook for some turbulent alarum outside, drumming the whole garrison

to arms. The next moment she plunged into the room, and there was Tam

Wilson! oh puir Tam Wilson! so pinched, so blue, so cold, sitting in

this frostbound cell, with his head upon the table, and his face in his

hands,--all his plans congealed in this hard freeze of fate and dead

like other transient blooms of the year under the snow.

As he looked up at the sound of her step, he recognized her upon the

instant. A faint wan smile quivered in his face. He was about to

speak, but she laid her finger warningly upon her lips. Then with one

hasty glance at the closed door behind her, she tore her bundle open

and rushed at him. She had another skirt such as she herself wore--of

brown serge, but little to choose between the shades--and slipped it

over his head in one moment. Then as she vainly sought to make her

slender waistband meet about his middle, although he too was slim,

she commented in a whisper, “My certie! to be built like a cask! I’ll

een pin it in the plaits, but it will no hing straight in the hem!”

She doffed her red cloak to throw it about him; her screen was on his

head, and realizing her intention, he could but kiss her hands as she

adjusted it under his chin, muffling his face and shoulders as she had

herself worn it, and taking the precaution to pin it here and there.

“For ye’ll get it aff afore ye are to the woods if I dinna haud a

care; an’ once in the woods by the river ye’ll find under that big

crag a canoe, an’ below the seat a gude store of food an’ wine. An’

to Charlestoun, lad, straight down the Keowee River and the Savannah

an’ out to sea! Some French ship will tak ye up, I mak nae doubt. The

pursuit will set the other way--to the Cherokee country.”

“And you?”

“Never fear! I’ll bide here--safe--amang my friends. Walk like me if ye

can; but be aff, callant, if ye luve your life!”

She sank into his chair; and mercurial though he was, he could

scarcely take up the rôle with the spirit with which she had laid it

down. As he opened the door into the guardroom he saw that the soldiers

had not yet returned. He barely glanced at the sentry whom he passed

on the outer step; and although the notice of the soldier was but the

casual attention of recognition and expectation, he felt the man’s

look as if it had been red-hot steel laid on a tender nerve. He walked

down slowly into the snow, blessing its depth that should make any

eccentricity of gait, except a long stride, seem the incident of its

impeding medium. In meeting the guard halfway returning from the gate,

he had but to mince modestly along, not lifting his eyes, the screen

drawn quite over his face; and since Miss Lilias was an uncommonly tall

woman and the Frenchman of but medium height, the difference was not

immediately apparent.

A sudden swift rush behind him just before he reached the gate--that

great envious portal that barred him from all his world, from safety,

from life itself--and he felt that he must drop here in the snow and

die, if so happy a fate as a death thus he might crave.

He had not had time to cry aloud in terror, in nervous stress, in

absolute despair, when the pursuing presence whizzed past, then

returning, leaped and fawned and wheezed about him with such evident

blissful recognition that if Miss Lilias Lesly had no other point of

identification to the eye of the sentry it would have been supplied

in the jovial manner of her companion, the faithful old collie. The

soldier presented arms as her semblance passed, to which extravagant

compliment the figure returned a bow of marked courtesy, and then

followed over the snow the frantically bounding collie, that was fairly

frenzied with joy to see and recognize anew, despite his feminine

frippery of attire, his friend of auld lang syne, Tam Wilson; for

the instinct of the collie was not so limited an endowment as the

intelligence of the sentry and the main guard.

XXI

IN her after life Lilias often reviewed her sentiments as she sat

there in the blue cold, with that curious suggestion of grit in the

air common to a low temperature, the repulsion to the dust of the

place more pronounced and apparent to the sensitive finger-tips than

if it were summer. She had wrapped herself in the otter-fur mantle

that she had carried in view of the relinquishment of her red rokelay

to the fugitive. Presently she put both feet on the rungs of the chair

and crouched forward like some tiny animal, her golden hair barely

glimpsed beneath the light brown tints of the fur. Sometimes she put

her blue hands to her mouth to feel how chill they were, and blew her

warm breath upon them; then again she clenched the trembling fingers

and drew her mantle closer. How cold it was! How had he endured it! It

might be colder still on the river, but he was speeding toward freedom,

and there was genial warmth in the mere suggestion. How cruel men were

to each other! And he was but obeying the behests of his government, as

Captain Howard regarded as sacred every scrawl that reached him from

headquarters.

Now and again the sounds from the guardroom caught her attention,--a

tramp of feet with a measured swinging gait, a snatch of song, and

presently a droning deep voice going on and on, as one should say for

an hour or more, with but little interruption, telling a long story.

How cold it was! how cold! She wondered how long she could sustain

it. The longer she sat here in her wrap of otter fur the farther he

would be on his way down the Keowee River. If only she could know

that he had made good his escape! that she had atoned for the dreadful

evil she had wrought in revealing his secret! Then indeed she would

be happy! In liberating him, she argued, she had promoted no massacre

of women and children. If aught that he had planned threatened them

it was frustrated, for he was off and on his way out of the country,

and she had aided his flight, nay, made it possible. If only she could

know that he had won the river bank and found the canoe! Down and

down the Savannah he would paddle the canoe, and a man in buckskins,

the usual garb of the country,--for he would soon doff the woman’s

habiliments,--would attract no attention from casual observers on

the banks; and some night--some dark night soon--he would float

out of Charlestown harbor, and finally be picked up by some French

man-of-war or merchantman, so many there were then in the southern

waters. The pursuit would undoubtedly take head in the opposite

direction. Few would imagine it safer to flee directly toward the

enemy’s stronghold rather than from it. They would follow him back

into the Indian country, where he had friends, influence, the French

prestige--a thousand reasons to command succor and concealment. But to

Charlestown--into the lion’s mouth? In this instance the lion slept

with his mouth open. Somehow she was sure no one would think of this

resource but herself. She would give him all the time she could, a good

start ahead of all possible pursuit. Six hours it might be, if she

could so long endure the cruel cold, before the noise of his escape

should be bruited abroad. The noonday meal was just concluded. The

British soldier was presumed to eat no supper; at least, only two meals

were furnished him, except on the frontier, where to content him the

better, perhaps, on the theory that the road to his heart lay through

his stomach, a third was served. This came a little before the hour of

retreat. She wondered if the prisoners shared in this extra refection.

She had an idea that then at all events she must needs call in the

guard; she would be able to endure it no longer.

As she sat crouching and still in the only chair of the bleak and

bare apartment, her attention was attracted by a crystalline tinkle

against the glass of the window. She thought it must be snowing

afresh. Presently she rose, stood upon the chair, for the window was

exceedingly high, to be out of the reach of any enterprising prisoner,

and then she stepped noiselessly upon the table. Looking upward through

the grimy glass she could see the whirl of dizzy flakes against the

sky. A tumultuous storm it was. A man fleeing through it would be

invisible. It would render pursuit impracticable, so long as it should

continue. Her heart gave a great throb of triumph. The afternoon was

wearing on. The light was dulling fast, and unless a barricade of ice

should impede the flow of the river these few hours’ start would mean

freedom to a man fleeing for his life!

Reassured, invigorated, she stepped slowly, softly down from the table

to the chair, and then from the chair to the floor. She seated herself

anew in silence, in loneliness, muffled to her eyebrows in her otter

furs, and listening to the gay snatches of song about the great flaring

hearth in the guardroom.

And it was cold, it was very cold!

During the afternoon Jock Lesly decided to tramp over to the fort.

He had a desire to compare views with Captain Howard and expatiate

on the incident of the capture, so full of import to them both,--to

the soldier as representing the military element, and the trader

the mercantile interests of the post. He had scarcely stretched out

his smoking boots to the fire, seated in the officer’s comfortable

quarters, than Captain Howard introduced the subject of the weather

in reference to the prisoner, intending to thank the trader for the

consideration he had manifested in sending blankets to the fort, in

view of the arctic temperature.

“We ought to consider our obligations to the helpless,” said the

officer, “but, as far as I am concerned, Gad, sir, I’m kept so short

for funds that it is often like letting a faithful soldier and servant

of the king go cold in order to house and blanket and warm some

miscreant enemy to the whole community.”

“Ou, aye, weel,” said auld Jock, a trifle out of countenance, “I’m

obleeged for your sarmon, sir. D’ye mean ye think I ought to blanket

an’ mainteen the king’s prisoners at bed an’ board?”

“No, oh no,” exclaimed the officer. “I only meant to thank you for the

blankets and furs and so on that your daughter brought over to-day,

kindly bethinking herself of the likelihood that the prisoner would

be neglected. In truth we have been surprisingly short, and if the

soldiers were not young and strong and had not a good deal of red blood

in their veins, I should expect to hear that some of them had frozen

stiff.”

“Wow, man, to be plain, I never heard o’ thae blankets afore!” Jock

Lesly confessed. “The lassie helpit her nainsel’, as she has a perfect

right to do, and I sall ne’er say her nay. All my gear an’ hoardings

will be hers ane day. An’ I doubt not she’ll find some feckless

ne’er-do-weel of a husband ter fling it a’ awa’. But it’s hers, it’s

a’ hers. I wark for nane else, but,” with an anxious pause and a keen

glance, “did ye notice whether it was the lamb’s wool or the yowe’s

wool blankets that the bairn had?”

“I did not see them at all,” said the officer hastily. “I only assured

her that she should have them all back safe, and bade her distribute

them to her own satisfaction.”

Jock Lesly rose to his feet. This was a topic on which he could not

rest in uncertainty. She might give away the blankets as she would, but

his curiosity as to which quality she had seen fit to take actually

burned him. He presently went tramping across the parade, and Captain

Howard, looking after him smilingly, little dreamed of the errand that

was to bring him back again.

The dull dreary evening, with the snow still dizzily whirling, was

closing in. Indeed but for the ghastly illumination of the reflection

from the snow on the ground, it would now be dark. The peaked roof of

the trading-house looming up among the flakes before Jock Lesly knew

that he was near it, so stanchly he strode through the deep drifts, was

of a benignant aspect to his mind, and he loved it. As he sounded a

whistle, that Duncan or Dougal or whatever henchman awaited his coming

should perceive his arrival and admit him to the domestic fortress,

he noticed how the smoke was flaring up from that flue of the chimney

devoted to the hearth so craftily hidden below. His heart warmed at the

thought of his ingleside in his subterranean home.

“I hinna seen my bairn a’ the day but by a wee gliff here awa’ an’

there awa’. If the lassie were in Charlestoun now I couldna believe

it,” he said to himself as he heard the clatter of the bars falling

within. “I’ll mak her sing some o’ thae auld sangs the nicht, when her

voice sounds sae like her mither’s, an’ then me an’ the gillie-packmen

an’ Luckie Meg will a’ sing the chorus an’ drink some flip. An’ it can

snaw an’ sleet, an’ the wind can blaw an’ bleat, an’ awa’ doun there by

the red ingle-neuk we’se never ken it at a’.”

Nevertheless when he was inside and the door secured anew, he said to

the under-trader, who stood swinging the lantern, “Dougal, whilk o’

thae bales o’ blankets did Miss Lilias open the morn,--the lamb’s wool

or the yowe’s wool? An’ how mony did she send to the fort?”

Dougal Micklin opened his eyes wide. “Neither the ane nor the t’

other!” he exclaimed jealously. “An’ what for suld she send blankets to

the fort?”

But Jock Lesly would not believe this. Had he not the word of the

recipient of her bounty, that is the commandant of the fort,--and he

truly thought that Howard must have suggested it!--that she had given

him the trader’s blankets to wrap up his prisoner?

“For whether it’s the lamb’s wool or the yowe’s wool, they are baith

verra gude, and ower gude to be given awa’ gratis,” Jock Lesly

argued. “For sic-like emergencies we brought them out frae Carolina,

not for the summer time! We forecast that cauld weather might catch

thae carles at the fort without kiver, and Captain Howard might buy

them, not beg them. He is the commandant of his majesty’s fort, not a

gaberlunzie man! It’s his bounden duty, even suld it cost him a wee

penny o’ thae short funds he bleats about, to protect his captives

frae suffering frae the inclement weather as a humane man, and as a

commandant it’s in the reg’lar way o’ business. I never heard o’ sic

a request onless it was made o’ Providence. We’se a’ ask Providence

for _onything_,--even to forgie us our debts that we made

oursel’s,--an’ I’ll be bound Captain Howard wad say, ‘Forgie us our

debts, _an’ interest on same_!’”

He began to laugh satirically, then became suddenly silent, for as the

lantern swung before a row of shelves, the light revealed the blankets

in question, duly baled, with not a cord cut nor a fold shaken out.

He did not wait for the under-trader to complete a laudatory account of

them, upon which Dougal had launched out as if he sought to sell them

to auld Jock himself, but which was purely mechanical, declaring that

they were of a fine quality and a heavy weight and could not be had

cheaper in Charlestown, notwithstanding the great expense of carriage

to the trader; that they were no designed for the Indian trade but for

such gentles as might--

“Be at the fort an’ afeard o’ freezin’,” interrupted Jock Lesly

sardonically. “But thae gentles would rather warm their taes at a

guinea than in a blanket that they have to pay for, man! ‘Forgie us

interest on same!’” And down Jock Lesly went upon the rungs of his

ladder and into his ain ha’ house.

Very cheerful it looked. The supper was already on the board, the

hearth swept, and the fire flaring. The little flax-wheel at which

Lilias sat so often at night was at one side, silent and motionless,

and great buffalo-skins lay before the hearth. No lamp glowed from the

little chamber beyond, and Jock Lesly stopped short at the sight of the

black darkness within.

“Where is Miss Lilias, Luckie?” he asked of old Meg, busied in brewing

the tea.

“I dinna ken,” she replied casually; then looking up, she added, “In

the tradin’-house maist likely. She has been flittin’ in an’ out a’ the

day, except for the last twa hours or sae.”

“There is not a soul in the trading-house!” cried Jock Lesly, with a

sudden cold clutch at his heart.

Snatching a candle from the table he quickly searched her little

chamber, the passage, the anteroom, all in vain! It was but a small

place after all, this ha’ house, and easily traversed.

Then he called her, his great rich resonant voice sounding from ceiling

to floor, from wall to wall, evoking a train of echoes, and alack with

so grievous a tremor in it that in listening the tears could but start.

The gillies, the under-trader had scoured every nook and cranny in the

trading-house and found naught. They looked at each other with white

scared faces, each repeating in astonishment at intervals, as if they

could not credit the marvel, “She isna here! She isna here!”

Jock Lesly, with an awful sense of responsibility, thought of his wife,

dead so long ago,--had he thus discharged the sacred trust of the care

of their only child!

There was not a moment to be lost, although perhaps hours had

already been wasted. Jock Lesly’s stanch courage rallied to meet the

emergency. All his life hereafter he might expend in grief, but the

present belonged to Lilias, and every force it could compass should be

consecrated to her service. He plunged through the whirl of snow, still

falling in the dense darkness; the tears that had poured unrestrained,

unheeded, shed unconsciously down his white cheeks, froze upon them,

and tiny icicles trembled upon his eyelashes. But he did not sob; his

breath held steady; his teeth were set, his every nerve was tense,

controlling his great physical strength that it might better seize

any opportunity of her rescue. The under-trader distinctly remembered

having seen her early in the afternoon returning from the fort and

walking with her collie toward the river. The collie had since reached

home, and with this testimony that she was no longer in the securities

of Fort Prince George they gathered the little group of packmen

about them in a close squad, and looking grimly to the priming of

their pistols they forcibly searched the Muscogee camp just outside

the works, thinking those troublous half-drunken wights might have

intercepted her as she came from the fort with the intention of holding

her for ransom when the terror at her disappearance should be at the

maximum.

Although taken by surprise and obviously astounded by the accusation,

the Muscogees could furnish no information, and their camp betrayed

not a trace of her presence. This hope dashed, the party followed

successively every glimmering _ignis fatuus_ of a possibility that

each could suggest; one remembered that a settler’s wife had a child

named in compliment “Lilias,” and as it was suddenly ill and near to

death, she might have visited it; another recounted the fact that an

old Indian woman near Keowee fascinated her with antiquated fables,

which she valued and loved to hear; another, upheld by superstition,

insisted on repairing to Keowee to consult the cheerataghe and have

them work a spell to reveal her whereabouts; and while this was in

progress Jock Lesly required the headmen to search the town and the

adjacent series of Cherokee habitations, once almost consecutive,

from Kulsage (Sugar Town), about a mile above and even at that time

extending far down the valley, toward the site of Sinica, burned by

the British during the Cherokee War. Hours passed in these fruitless

efforts, and at last, when each lure had finally flickered out in the

darkness of despair, Jock Lesly turned again as a final hope to the

fort. He would consult the last man who saw her there, the sentry at

the gate, for perchance she might have expressed to him some inkling

of her intention to go elsewhere than home. The gillies all eager,

zealous, plunging through the drifts followed him; now and again

they fell over the submerged stumps of the clearing and wandered out

of their course and far afield, but Jock Lesly as if by instinct

avoided every impediment, and albeit the whirl of flakes obscured all

intimation of that blended glimmer and hazy aureola that were wont to

mark the site of the fort by night, he reached the gate as unerringly

as if the bastions, the barracks, the flag on the tower of the

block-house were flaunting in the bold light of day.

None was so swift as he of all the light young fellows, but a moment

after the sentry’s challenge rang upon the chill night air he heard the

ice of the broad moat crack with a great splash, as Duncan, mistaking

the direction of the gate, fell into the frozen water of the ditch,

and much splutter and torrid exclamations as he scrambled out. The

noise attracted the attention of the sentinel in the tower of the

block-house, and the sharp report of his musket, as he fired a warning

into the air, brought out the main-guard before the corporal could

reach the sentry at the gate.

In another moment there was a great commotion upon the parade,

erstwhile so dark and silent. A shifting of lanterns here and there

threw long cone-shaped shafts of light down the snowy expanse,

illuminating in limited sections a log building near at hand, with its

drift-laden eaves and window-sills, and all the atmosphere a silent,

palpitating mysterious motion as the flakes still whirled. The glitter

of the scarlet and steel of the armed guard, its expectant aggressive

mien, its quick tramp and alert bearing might seem to offer a sort of

reassurance with its note of ready confidence. And indeed Jock Lesly’s

hope revived, albeit the jaunty military manner of the young officer of

the day was at variance with his anxious intent troubled face, revealed

by the lantern held aloft that he might descry his visitor’s care-worn

white lineaments.

“Help you to find a trace? See the last man who saw her? That must be

the sentry at the gate--and the next, the prisoner himself.”

As to learn from the officer of the guard the name of the sentinel

who had been posted at the gate at that hour and since relieved was a

work of more or less time, the interval could obviously be employed

in interrogating the prisoner himself as to the possible intimations

of her immediate intentions that Lilias might have expressed when

she quitted his cell. The permission of the commandant would be

necessary,--but here suddenly was the commandant himself, roused from

sleep by the stir, and with his voice kind and reassuring.

“Never fear, dear fellow,” he said, passing his arm fraternally through

the quaking Lesly’s, “we’ll find her if we have to search the Indian

country inch by inch. They’ll never dare to harm her, for they will

hold her for ransom. I can feel for you, for have I not two daughters

of my own?”

But as they strode together through the guardroom, with its flaring

fire and its tramping, thronging, military inmates, and opened the

inner door to the dark and chill military prison beyond, Captain

Howard’s sentiments fell far the other side of friendly, for there, her

golden head pillowed on the hard table, her mantle of otter fur drawn

close about her ears, her feet perched upon the rung of the chair,

sat fast asleep the trader’s daughter, while the great flakes of snow

jingled crystalline and keen against the glass of the window, and the

dark hours merged deep into the mid-glooms of the night.

And Captain Howard’s valuable prisoner was gone! His prisoner--whom

valiant men had risked their lives to secure. His prisoner--whom

hundreds of miles of cruel forced marches, privations incredible, and

dangers unnumbered had brought at last to his door. His prisoner--whom

other commanders had tried in vain to take, for whose capture many

other plans of specious wiles had failed and fallen short. His

prisoner--on whose triumphant delivery to the military and civil

authorities in Charlestown his majority depended. This prisoner--gone,

gone! And in his stead, in his secure cell with not a bar broken, not

a sentry bribed, no vigilance relaxed, was a girl, just awakened, half

frozen, all bewildered and beginning to cry.

Jock Lesly caught the officer’s first outburst of dismay and surprise

and rage as a man might a blow, putting up his arm to guard his face.

“Hegh, Captain,” he said, his hand clasping the girl’s as she cowered

and blinked before the light that coldly fell upon the bare walls, the

high window, the dusty floor, all infinitely bleak and gloomy. “I’se

gae nae furder in a’ this gear! Let but the bairn get to the fire! I

confess! I’m bound to confess! My heart can haud sic a care o’ deceit

nae langer! ’Twas me that planned to liberate the callant! I sent the

lassie here to win ye by a trick an’ to turn him loose drest in sic

gear as hers an’ to tak his place. ’Twas _me_, Captain, an’ I

surrender!”

Great as were the variant urgencies of the situation, the cold coerced

the group mechanically toward the fire in the guardroom, and they stood

on the broad hearth, the soldiers withdrawing a few paces to give them

space. The glittering muskets had been all stacked anew; the open door

showed a broad lane of light gleaming down the snowy parade outside,

the flakes still madly whirling. Captain Howard in his hastily assumed

military uniform, with his ungartered hose wrinkled and loose, and

evidently unconscious that he still wore a red flannel nightcap with

a queer tassel, had a touch of the grotesque, in contrast with the

dapper perfection of the ensign’s regimentals with his up-all-night

expectation as officer of the day. All looked in dismay, in growing

anger, in gathering doubt at Jock Lesly.

The trader stanchly returned their gaze. The shoulders of his great

match-coat were covered with snow, which was beginning to drip as it

thawed with the heat of the fire, and he held pressed close to his side

his golden-haired daughter. She was fully awake now, and looking out

with alert, wide-eyed expectation from her mantle of otter fur drawn

partially over her head.

“Jock Lesly,” cried the captain, “you are lying! Why should you, always

a loyal subject, with the interest of your trade dependent upon the

preservation of the peace with the Cherokees, set free this turbulent

Laroche, this stirrer-up of strife along the frontier?”

“Ou,--ay,” said Jock Lesly, holding up his chin and gazing about him

speculatively as if he looked for his inspiration in the air, “a’ that

is verra true; but this lad hae eat o’ my salt up in the Tennessee

country, an’”--

“You are lying!” cried the officer angrily, “and if you were not, it

would be as much as my life is worth to tell you so, even with my guard

around me! You know, and I know, that the child did it of her own

accord,--and for what, missy? Why did you liberate the man?”

“Ye’ll no ask the bairn questions, Captain Howard!” interposed Jock

Lesly angrily. “I stand here ready to tak the responsibility an’ answer

for the deed! The lassie is no accountable for what she says! She’s

cauld, half starved! I surrender! I surrender! It’s no the lassie’s

will that brought her here! I sent her! ’Twas me, her cruel father! She

is cauld! I surrender! I”--

“I let the prisoner out!” said Lilias suddenly, and her voice rang in

that grim guardroom like some sweet string of a harp, keyed so high

above any vibrations to which it was accustomed, yet rich and resonant

with its fullness of tone. “I let him out because he was betrayed by my

word. I tauld Callum MacIlvesty that he was French, for he had avowed

it to me; but I was thinkin’ then ’twas known to a’ the warld, an’ sae

Callum MacIlvesty tauld you, Captain Howard, that he was no Tam Wilson,

as Lieutenant Everard took him to be, but French, and ye sent to tak

him. An’ now since I hae nae treachery to answer for,--for _I_’m

no keeper o’ the guard-house here,--I’ll gae to gaol or where ye will

wi’ a free heart. I care na for naught!”

She turned her face and golden head against her father’s great snowy

coat as he once more futilely ejaculated, “The bairn’s cauld! it’s gey

cauld weather! and she disna ken what she is sayin’!”

But Captain Howard, after an eager consultation aside with several

officers of the garrison, summoned by the unusual commotion, and

a survey of the conditions of the raging storm, returned to the

questioning of Lilias.

“And at what time did this happen, mistress? What hour was it when you

saw fit to turn the king’s prisoner loose upon the country?”

“Five minutes scant after you gave me leave to speak wi’ the callant;

an’ after he was gone I stude the cauld as lang as I could, thinking

to gie him a fair start, an’ then I drapped aff in a wee bit nap. It’s

ower cauld comfort ye gie to your puir prisoners, Captain Howard.”

“And what direction did he take?” the officer asked eagerly.

“Ah-h!” she cried, her red lips showing her white teeth, her nodding

head setting her golden hair to glimmering beneath the brown otter fur,

her eyes shining with triumph, “it’s _him_ that didna say! He is

the sodger-man to keep his plans in the sole o’ his boot.”

Her father pressed her head smotheringly against the folds of his great

coat. “Whist, hinny, whist!” he exclaimed vacuously; “I surrender,

Captain! I surrender! The bairn’s but a bairn when a’ is said! She kens

na what she is sayin’; an’ I mak nae doubt, too, she is tellin’ lees.”

“I make no doubt that _you_ are telling lies!” said the captain in

despair.

For with full ten hours’ start, the escaped prisoner, himself a

military man of much experience, of tried courage, of crafty resource,

and moreover singularly well acquainted with the conditions of the

country, could set at defiance any pursuer who should enter upon the

chase in darkness, in intense cold, in a furious snowstorm, and in

absolute ignorance of the direction which the fugitive had taken. The

passage of the night with the late wintry dawn would add some seven

hours to the fair start she had contrived for him. The commandant

was nettled by the consciousness that this advantage might have been

somewhat abridged by a trifle more precaution; for although no supper

was served the prisoner, he being expected to reserve such portion as

he desired from his dinner for that purpose, as was the habit, for

which an allowance was duly made, the cell had been visited by the

officer of the day when making his rounds. The girl was still soundly

sleeping, and doubtless did not hear the opening of the door as the

officer of the day unlocked it and glanced in. It was already dark, and

by the faint glimmerings of the lantern held outside for him by the

corporal accompanying him upon his rounds, he saw the bare walls and

floor, and in the single chair a muffled figure leaning upon the table,

presumably asleep or plunged in deep dejection, the head bowed upon the

arms. It never occurred to him that this shadowy presence in the bleak

gloom could be other than the exhausted and travel-worn prisoner, whom

he did not wish to rouse unnecessarily. The officer’s duties were many

and pressing at this hour and called him elsewhere. Therefore, closing

the door and turning the key, he thought no more of the captive till he

saw the golden head of the changeling when the mystery was revealed.

Captain Howard, who had given the girl access to the cell, could ill

accuse the subaltern of neglect of duty, and the commandant himself

could hardly have been expected to guard against masterly strategy in

the quarter whence it had emanated.

Messengers were presently ready to start out with the first intimation

of a lull in the storm or the peep of day to warn all the Cherokee

towns of reprisal should they dare to harbor the fugitive, for that

Laroche would return to the friendly Cherokee strongholds hardly

admitted of a doubt in the mind of Captain Howard. He had not

sufficient troops at command to awe the Indians into surrendering the

fugitive, but he hoped that the passive force of the treaty and its

advantages, otherwise annulled, might avail.

Captain Howard was a man of magnanimity. Even with the cup of

well-earned success dashed from his lips he had the good feeling to

pity the father,--his own daughters were far away in England,--as Jock

Lesly continually ejaculated, “_I_ surrender, Captain! The wean’s

no responsible! _I_ surrender!”

“Jock,” he said, “you need not forswear yourself. We all know that

you would not have jeopardized the fair interests of the Indian trade

for all the Johnny Crapauds who ever passed the tongue of a buckle

through a sword-belt,--not even if instead of your salt he had eaten

your whole station! Miss Lilias Lesly here, for reasons seeming to

herself good and fitting”--he cast upon her an acrid glance--“set the

man free,--for which she is under arrest, and”--intercepting a wild

bleat of paternal protest--“will remain so in your ain ha’ house under

your watch and ward; and we have no doubt she will be produced when

summoned, and you will give your faithful recognizance to that effect.”

He was reflecting that it would answer every purpose to detain the

girl thus, for while her punishment might result should the matter

continue of importance, it would otherwise hardly be contemplated by

the colonial authorities in view of the unpopularity of such a step.

Jock Lesly was in such haste to sign and seal a paper betokening this

clemency that he could hardly hold the sputtering quill; and during

this solemn ceremony the irrepressible Lilias broke out laughing with

hysterical glee, and requested Captain Howard to put into a wee corner

o’ that paper the promise he had given her that she “suld hae a’ thae

blankets that were ne’er brought to the fort, afore the sodgers suld

steal them a’.”

“Thae bit duds were unco gude duds,” she remarked fleeringly of these

immaterial comforts.

XXII

CALLUM MACILVESTY had been soon at Jock Lesly’s side to afford him

such succor and countenance as was possible under the circumstances.

He asked for leave to aid him in transporting Lilias, so stiff with

the cold was she, back to the cave house, where she sat on the buffalo

rug before the flaring fire, her glittering hair all tumbling about

her shoulders, her eyes shining with triumph, and laughing with gay

outbursts of flattered joy to learn how wretched they had all been

because of her absence, and how wrong and wicked they esteemed her

sudden arbitrary release of the prisoner.

“_I_ amna sorry,” she protested, “except for that the callant hae

on my gude red rokelay, an’ my best puce-colored serge gownd, an’ my

gude murrey screen, wi’ only ae wee tear in the weft o’ it,--an’ I’se

warrant I’ll no see a’ that braw gear again!”

It was Callum who sought to impress her with the magnitude of the

offense that she had committed, for Jock Lesly cared for naught else on

earth save that she was safe and sat once more on the rug before the

blazing fire of the ha’ house.

“An’ what care I how far ye went an’ how hard ye fared to tak him,

Callum!” she cried indignantly. “Gin I hadna tauld you the callant

was French, you wad ne’er hae kenned it. An’ ye tauld yon Captain

Howard--that bluidy-minded chiel! I wuss he was in his ain cauld

tolbooth to freeze stiff like my nainsell!”

“Whist, whist, hinny!” remonstrated Jock Lesly. “Callum wadna hae tauld

the lad was French had he kenned you wad wuss to keep it secret; wad

ye, Callum?”

With this direct appeal the Highland soldier, sitting in his armchair

opposite Jock Lesly at the fire, with Lilias between them on the rug,

gazed steadily into the glowing coals. He could not evade the question.

“Yes,” he answered, “I wad! I wad ha’ tauld e’en if Lilias had bid me

keep a quiet sough aboot it!”

“Na, Callum! surely na!” exclaimed Jock Lesly irritably. “Ye wadna vex

the bairn!” For Lilias had lifted her head with its wealth of flaring

hair, and was gazing at Callum with intent, questioning, speculative

eyes. “Ye care too muckle for Lilias for that!” Jock Lesly prompted him.

“I care more for my oath, for my duty, than for any lassie alive!”

protested the blunt soldier.

There was a moment’s silence, while the fire roared and the smoke

rushed up the chimney into the wild wintry storm without, of which they

here heard naught. Jock Lesly, with a knitted brow, filled his pipe and

said no more. Callum, his glass poised upon his knee, gazed steadfastly

into the flames, and Lilias, with dewy, gleaming eyes fixed upon him,

suddenly exclaimed, as if in delighted reminiscence, “Ou, ay, that was

what Tam Wilson said! His oath, his honor aboon a’! No woman’s wile, no

woman’s smile could win him awa’! Ah, the leal heart he had! That is

what Tam Wilson aye said!”

“I care na for Tam Wilson, nor for what he said!” declared the dour

Callum glumly.

“Not the ane you kenned!” cried Lilias. “_This_ Tam Wilson ye

never saw!”

The Highland soldier thought the cold and excitement and anxiety had

shaken her balance a trifle.

“But Callum,” she persisted, “suppose it wad gar me like you better if

you had hid that the puir lad is French?”

“I wadna hae dune it! I wadna hae hid it!” He shook his head sadly,

and her father stared at him in amazement. Inch by inch he teemed

renouncing his chance for the girl’s good graces.

“A-weel, a-weel,” she said slowly. “But since a’s come an’ gane, an’

the march was for naething, an’ the prisoner is flitted, an’ I was

frozen wi’ cauld an’ misery, an’ am like to be sent to Charlestoun to

answer for my crimes, ye can say now, lad, that ye are verra sorry that

ye disclosed my gossip to your officer, an’ ye wadna do it again if it

were to be done anew! Ye will say that?” She looked at him with keen

expectant eyes.

“I wad do it all the same,” he protested deliberately. Then, “Lilias,

why wad ye torment me wi’ a’ these questions? They tear out my heart!”

“I sall ne’er forget it!” she cried. “Ye did it against my wull. An’

now ye say that if ye had the chance anew ye wad e’en do it agen,

though I suld _hate_ ye for it!”

“It’s my oath, Lilias! My duty! I canna look to you instead o’ thae

great obligations. I suld do it again an’ again, whate’er ye might say

or feel, an’ keep my oath till death!”

She suddenly broke out laughing afresh, in shrill sweet ecstatic joy.

“That Tam Wilson! Wha wad think! That Tam Wilson at last!”

She seemed enigmatic to them both, but they hardly had space to read

the riddle, for Callum, recognising the passage of time, sprang up to

return to the fort before his limited leave expired. He ran briskly

up the ladder with Jock Lesly clambering after him to take down the

barricade to let him out, and to secure the bars subsequent to his

exit. There was still fire upon the hearth of the great trading-house,

and a dull red glow suffused its dusky brown spaces. It was only as

Lesly turned to close the door of the counter that he noticed that

Lilias, agile enough despite the congealed condition she so graphically

described, had followed also, and after the soldier had sprung down

the front steps and strode off through the snow the two, father

and daughter, stood for a moment gazing into the vast dark stormy

wilderness, permeated by the sense of silent unseen motion in the

whirling flakes, of which only the nearest were visible in the red glow

of the dying fire from within.

“Hegh, come, bairnie, we’se e’en steek the door,” Lesly said.

The lantern in his hand showed her face to be all sweetly smiling. She

was looking into the blank voids of the snowy gloom and carrying first

one hand and then the other to her lips with an engaging free curve and

tossing each toward the wilderness.

“And what now?” he demanded, staring owlishly down at her in amaze.

“Just throwing a wheen kisses to Tam Wilson,--oh puir Tam Wilson! Wha

wad hae thought he wad e’er win hame agen!”

“Wow!” said her father glumly. “Tam Wilson!--drat Tam Wilson, I say! We

hae had an unco pother ower Tam Wilson, now!”

But she ran in ahead of him laughing in great glee, and he overheard

her in her little chamber while she disrobed for bed talking about Tam

Wilson and Tam Wilson to Luckie Meg, who answered acquiescently to

whatever she said, “Ou,--ay! I’se warrant!” and apparently gave scant

heed, even if she heard at all.

For some weeks Callum MacIlvesty felt anew that he was admitted into

a sort of Paradise in frequenting the ha’ house, albeit his heart was

sore. The rescue that she had planned and achieved for the prisoner

at such risk and suffering to herself argued much for the strength of

her attachment to Laroche, and this forbade hope even when hope seemed

most possible. She herself was so gay, so whimsically cheery, so blithe

about the hearth, where the Highlander loved to sit as of yore with her

father. She noted Callum’s depressed mien, and ascribing it to the

fruitless result of the long laborious march and triumphant capture,

argued that he had done all that he could and more than any other man

would, his whole duty, and the sequence was the affair of Captain

Howard,--and then remarked most pertinently that if she were that

officer and had no better a tassel to a nightcap than that frayed thing

he sported in public at the guard-house, she would resign from the army!

In order to prove that Captain Howard had himself sustained no

damage in the loss of his notable prisoner, she cited the fact that

the war with France was now over, cessation of hostilities had been

announced on the 21st of January, and since the treaty had been signed

in February, it had become known that the French forts, Toulouse,

Tombecbé, Condé, were to be surrendered as early as English officers

could be detailed to receive the transfer. All prisoners were to be

released,--among those specially demanded she had seen in the Gazette

the name of Lieutenant de Laroche,--already escaped though he was!

But all this, though so prettily urged, did not suffice to lift the

gloom that weighed on Callum’s mind. He was soon to say farewell, to

rejoin the Forty-Second, to go he knew not whither, nor when to return!

It was one day when he was thus a-mope, as Lilias was wont to describe

his state of mind, that Callum discovered her secret, if so candid an

emotion can be so called. The ha’ house had fallen into its ancient

habitudes cannily enough, as if sorrows had never menaced it, and

Lilias in her brilliant blue gown with roses scattered adown its white

stripes sat at her wheel spinning as heedfully and dexterously as if

she had never fashioned toils of more significance. Callum on the

settle, his arms folded, his head a little bent, gazed into the red

coals. All that he had once hoped, nay expected, was annulled by the

sentiments implied in her release of Laroche, and the resentment she

had expressed toward himself for revealing aught that she had told

him, albeit she had not bespoken secrecy. Therefore he experienced

a revulsion of feeling so complete, so acute, as almost to resemble

pain in its breathless keenness. He had suddenly lifted his eyes and

caught hers fixed upon him with an expression he had never seen in

them before, wistful, smiling, yet serious, and deeply tender. His

heart gave a great plunge and every nerve was tense. He rose, and

still looking at her, as if he feared she might vanish like some

lovely dream, advanced across the hearth. He sat down beside her in

her father’s chair, still seeking to read--the dullard!--the obvious

mystery of the sapphire light in her eyes.

“Lilias,” he said clumsily and all tremulous, “have you something to

tell me?”

“I trow not!” she exclaimed, her face roseate with smiles and blushes,

but giving a lofty nod of her golden head. “I was thinking, man, you

may hae something to tell to me!”

“Ah, Lilias, I hae tauld it sae often!” he cried bewildered.

“An’ sae you are tired o’ telling it?” she retorted. “Eh, sirs, to be

tired sae early!”

“I can never be tired of telling it, Lilias, if only you will listen to

it,--how I love you more and more day by day!”

“It’s just as weel, then,”--she cast a radiant smile upon him as

she bent anew to her wheel,--“for I expect to listen to it--that

is--whiles--at orra times--when I hae naething better to do--as lang as

I live.”

It was not in Callum’s scheme of love-making to suggest the suddenness

of this acceptability of a suit so long urged. Luckie Meg herself could

not have assented more acquiescently than he in every detail that

Lilias chose to propound. It was only once, in the course of those long

sunless afternoons in the cavern, with the red glow of the fire about

them and the impenetrable walls to fend off the alien world so far

away from their consciousness, when all their talk was of their mutual

experience of the sentiment that swayed them, what each had felt and

thought, that Callum showed symptoms of rebellion--being informed that

she looked upon him and he might consider himself as “Tam Wilson.”

“But I will not!” cried Callum, ready to put the question to the

torture at once. Jealousy is not so easily vanquished. Indeed it hardly

dies even under the heel of victory!

“Not the ane that you knew,” she stipulated. “Just ane auld love o’ my

ain! He wad put his oath before all. An’ he loved a woman well, but

honor mair! an’ he had no deceit nor guile in his heart (though I hinna

forgot about your report to Captain Howard, neither, an’ I’ll sort ye

weel for it some day), an’ he had no false nations nor false tongues

(he had mickle ado to speak his ain), an’ no false names (‘Tam Wilson’

bein’ laid to him because he was sae like ‘Tam Wilson’). An’ I suld hae

kenned ye earlier for him,--though your hair hae aye got a place that

is streakit wi’ brown an’ lighter brown an’ I think it wadna show gin

it were brushed backward,--but I aye loved the look o’ ye, only I never

saw ye put to the test, and sae I thought ye were just plain ‘Callum

McIlvesty.’ But now I ken ye are Tam Wilson!”

And smiling at him with lips so joyous, so red and sweet, Callum

yielded the point and assumed in this wise the sobriquet which

personified her girlish ideal.

Still it nettled him grievously. She might have called her ideal

“Callum.”

“Whist, lad, whist,” said her father to him one day, “an’ I’se tell ye

something ye will ne’er find out frae her.”

Then with much solemnity, with circumspection, he pulled out a paper

from his wallet, to which he could not have paid more respectful and

close attention if it had been a schedule of prices current. It was a

letter from Laroche, dated on the French man-of-war L’Aigle, and was

addressed jointly to Jock Lesly and his daughter. It was an offer of

marriage to Lilias, and begged that they would fix a date to meet him

in Charlestown, where the ceremony might be performed by both Catholic

and Protestant clergy. It set forth his rank, means, and expectations,

which were very considerable, and gave references which were both

accessible and unimpeachable.

“An’, lad,” said Jock Lesly, looking owlishly at Callum while leaning

over the counter at the trading-house where he had driven so many

bargains, “seeing that she is my only child, and that ensigncy of

yours is gey far to seek, and this man is a sure enough lieutenant,

not o’ red Injuns but of the French army, and is a chevalier or a

sieur,--there’s no rebate on that,--and has lands an’ a château and

some income, and the lassie seemed fond o’ him on the Tennessee, and

here she set him free when they had him by the heels at the fort,--why

I downa say, but I advised her--weel, to marry the fallow, when we go

down this spring, an’ gae to live in France. It’s far awa’, is France,

but they hae gude glimmerings o’ sense about their weaving there. I hae

seen some gude camlets frae France, an’ ye ken there’s no place like

Lyons for silk--though that’s na for my trade neither.”

Callum’s heart sank for the mere consciousness that his happiness had

trembled in such jeopardy. “And what did she say?”

“Lilias?--why, she said ae sentence, ‘He isna Tam Wilson!’ Sae, lad, if

ye will be advised by me, ye’ll be Tam Wilson as near as ye can find

out how!”

About this time an ensigncy was secured for Callum through his family’s

influence, and when he returned shortly to Charlestown he met there

Everard, who was in a state of exuberant and facetious triumph in the

manner of the escape of Captain Howard’s prisoner, having earlier

eluded him also, and who was the first to congratulate the young

Highlander upon the attainment of his commission and the near approach

of his wedding day. For in the early summer Callum and Lilias were

married in Charlestown and sailed away, leaving auld Jock still deeply

immersed in the problems of the Indian trade. These problems became

much simplified by the withdrawal of the French from the country,

and soon the Cherokees began to present those curious symptoms of

degeneracy which seem the inevitable incident of the first stages of

civilization, an interregnum, so to speak, which ensues upon the last

vestiges of the ancient status. Thereafter they were only formidable

locally and in small predatory bands, and represented no more a

definitely organized menace to the British provinces. In the course of

some years a great happiness and source of pride fell to the lot of

Jock Lesly. The reversal of the attainder had restored the chief of the

ancient house of MacIlvesty to his pristine position with others of his

kinsmen of minor rank. By reason of several deaths Callum MacIlvesty

succeeded to a baronetcy, and Jock Lesly, despite his quondam bluff

expressions of scorn of a title, found its taste exceedingly sweet as

applied to his daughter; he was proud too of Callum’s rise in the army

through successive promotions for gallant conduct in the field.

“He smacks his lips ower ‘Captain Sir Callum an’ Leddy MacIlvesty’ as

if the words were fitten to eat,” Dougal commented dourly, “an’ somehow

he says ’em fifty times a day!”

There was another who heartily rejoiced in this advance of fortune when

it came to his ears, for Lady MacIlvesty’s beauty and what were called

her “eccentricities” made her of some social note in her day. Laroche

had loved the girl very truly for herself, and although he had sought

to look upon her rejection of his suit as in a certain sense an escape

for himself, in view of her humble station, her plebeian father, her

simple education and limited experience, and their incongruity with his

objects of ambition and the sphere of his association, he could not

entertain the reminiscence without a keen sentimental regret, albeit

blended with tender pleasure to know that the world had gone well with

her. He too had reached, as he deserved, promotion, and at no small

danger, as the sabre slashes received in the hand-to-hand warfare of

that day, and which disfigured his bland handsome face, might betoken.

He lived several years after his retirement from active service. One

who had known him in those halcyon days on the Tennessee River might

hardly have recognized him later, so scarred, gray-haired, wrinkled,

and very thin he had become,--a mere rack on which to hang his

decorations and the ribbons of his orders. He had always been esteemed

a man of unique ability, and his conversation was long valued by the

judicious in the cafés and salons of Paris which he frequented. When he

reached the discursive and reminiscent stage of advancing age, often,

as the night would wear on in a choice company, he would discourse

of high themes of national possibilities, and regretfully rehearse

disastrous phases of the country’s past that had fallen within his

personal knowledge,--of the great territories that France had developed

and forfeited; plans of empire that she had failed to utilize; strange

peoples of martial values who had sought her protectorate in vain. Then

he would revert to his own life among them,--reciting details of their

curious customs and mysterious antiquity; telling thrilling stories of

personal adventure, now of an escape from the menace of the torture and

the stake, and now of his release from the trebly guarded stronghold of

a British fort by the aid of a beautiful English lady of rank who loved

him and whom he adored.

And although as he grew older and his audiences younger they believed

this unnamed English lady of rank to be entirely apocryphal, the tear

was obviously genuine with which he sweetened his glass as he told that

she was dead now,--years ago--ah yes--dead!

“_Il y a une autre vie! C’est une belle espérance!_” he would

sigh, for he was always deeply religious. “But alas, that the sweets of

this life are transitory!”

And presently he would be talking of the triumphs of engineering

possible in that vast America. Sometimes he would trace out on the

tablecloth with the aid of the scroll-like pattern of the damask the

outline of the great bend of a river which he affirmed had singly

saved that country to the English and reft it from the French, as

its extraordinary obstructions to navigation prevented all adequate

conveyance of munitions of war to the Cherokees, who held the balance

of power. He would mark off the canal which he had purposed to

build in the fullness of time, and the site he had selected for the

barrier towns to guard the region of the portages, necessary to evade

the obstructions, as a temporary substitute. The technical terms

of the oft-told tale, the abstruse calculations of the elaborately

demonstrated problem, would finally wear out the interest of his

auditors; they would slip away one by one, and leave him bending over

the table, gloating upon the symmetrical possibilities of his plan,

bewailing its untimely frustration, seeing, instead of the blank cloth,

that rich new land with its gigantic growths of primeval forests and

those dizzy whirls of turbulent waters, that stretch out miles and

miles impassably, where even now, despite the advance of modern science

and the exorcising appropriations of Congress, the devils, _hottuk

ookproose_, still dance in the riotous rapids and sing tumultuously

as of yore.

NOTES

NOTES

[Footnote 1: Page 4. A detail of the incidents of this visit to the

king in London and the consequent impressions made upon the minds of

the Indians would be of much interest to the student of civilization.

It is to be regretted that Lieutenant Henry Timberlake of Virginia,

who accompanied the Cherokees to England, should have devoted so great

a space in his “Memoirs” of that event (published in London in 1765)

to plaintive accounts of his wrangling with governmental officials

concerning his reimbursement for sundry expenses on their account,

with which it seems he burdened himself without sufficient warrant,

and to the effort to repel the insinuation that he undertook the

enterprise of conducting them thither for his own personal profit, as

impresario so to speak; for the people of that city pressed in hordes

to see them, many of the nobility as well as citizens of lower rank,

and some, evidently without the knowledge of Lieutenant Timberlake,

paid for the privilege. Beyond the strange dirge-like chant which

Ostenaco sang on landing; their indifference to the architecture of

the Cathedral of Exeter; their terror of the statue of Hercules with

uplifted club which they saw at Wilton (they begged to be taken away

immediately); their relish of the entertainments at Ranelegh, Vauxhall,

and especially of the pantomimes at Sadler’s Wells; their admiration of

the youth, personal beauty, and affability of the king, there is naught

to indicate their attitude of mind. A contemporary account, however, in

the “Annual Register” for 1762 gives a personal glimpse of them.

“Three Cherokee chiefs, lately arrived from South Carolina, in order

to settle a lasting peace with the English, had their first audience

of his majesty. The head chief called Outacite or Man-killer, on

account of his many gallant actions, was introduced by Lord Eglinton,

and conducted by Sir Clement Cottrell, master of ceremonies. They were

upwards of an hour and a half with his majesty, who received them

with great goodness, and they behaved in his presence with remarkable

decency and mildness. The man who assisted as interpreter on this

occasion, instead of one who set out with them, but died on his

passage, was so confused that the king could ask but few questions.

“These chiefs are well-made men, near six feet high, their faces and

necks coarsely painted of a copper colour, and they seem to have no

hair on their heads. They came over in the dress of their country,

consisting of a shirt, trowzers, and mantle, their heads covered with

skull-caps and adorned with shells, feathers, earrings, and other

trifling ornaments. On their arrival in London they were conducted

to a house taken for them in Suffolk street, and habited more in the

English manner. When introduced to his majesty the head chief wore a

blue mantle covered with lace, and had his head richly ornamented.

On his breast hung a silver gorget with his majesty’s arms engraved.

The other two chiefs were in scarlet, richly adorned with gold lace,

and gorgets of plate on their breasts. During their stay in England

of about two months they were invited to the tables of several of the

nobility, and were shown by a gentleman, appointed for that purpose,

the tower, the camps, and everything else that could serve to impress

them with proper ideas of the power and grandeur of the nation; but it

is hard to say what impression these sights made upon them, as they had

no other way of communicating their sentiments but by their gestures.

They were likewise conducted every day to one or another of the places

of amusement, in and about London, where they constantly drew after

them innumerable crowds of spectators, to the no small emolument of

the owners of these places, some of which raised their prices to make

the most of such unusual guests. Here they behaved in general with

great familiarity, shaking hands very freely with all those who thought

proper to accept that honour. They carried home with them articles of

peace between his majesty and their nation, with a handsome present of

warlike instruments and such other things as they seemed to place the

greatest value on.”]

[Footnote 2: Page 5. The Indian phrases given in this volume are

studied from sources as nearly contemporaneous as may be with the

events herein narrated, both for the sake of verisimilitude and because

of the multitudinous changes to which the aboriginal languages have

since been subjected, for the purpose of classification in view of

the diverse orthography of the earlier philologists, which varied, of

course, according to nationality, French, German, or English.

It is interesting to note the differing estimate of the value which

the learned place on this singular jetsam and flotsam of the seas of

Time. The study of the aboriginal languages, apart from historical

considerations, possesses great interest in the revelation of “new

plans of ideas,” as Monsieur Maupertuis felicitously phrases methods

of grammatical construction. “The Greek is admired for its compounds,

yet what are they to those of the Indians!” exclaims the eminent

philologist, Mr. Duponceau. “What would Tibullus or Sappho have

given to have had at their command a word at once so tender and so

expressive--_wulamalessohalian_, ‘thou who makest me happy’? How

delighted would be Moore, the poet of the loves and graces, if his

language, instead of five or six tedious words, had furnished him with

an expression like this in which the lover, the object beloved, and the

delicious sentiment are blended and fused together in one comprehensive

and appellative term. And is it in the language of savages that these

beautiful forms are found!”

And yet in the learned work on America by Mr. Edward John Payne of

University College, Oxford, still in course of publication, it is

stated that “the majority of these languages, if not absolutely

the lowest in the glossological scale, are as near the bottom as

the student of the origin of speech could well desire.” Of their

polysynthetic features, which Mr. Duponceau so much admires, Mr.

Payne speaks as of merely bunched words, regarding the holophrase as

the primitive and simplest form of ignorant language, which in the

development and weight of meaning is broken finally, producing in its

disintegration parts of speech.

Lord Monboddo, in his “Origin and Progress of Language,” founding his

opinion partly on the testimony of Father Sagard’s work, “Le Grand

Voyage du Pays des Hurons,” says of the Huron language, “It is the

most imperfect of any that has ever been discovered;” whereas Mr.

Duponceau finds it “rich in grammatical forms,” and permits himself the

expression “pompous ignorance” in alluding to the conclusions of his

learned confrère.

The fact that Dr. Adam Smith as well as Lord Monboddo perceived in the

tendency to incorporate in one word the meaning of a whole sentence an

evidence of barbarism induces Mr. Duponceau to support the contrary

opinion with “a lively example from Suetonius, _Ave Imperator,

morituri_ (those-who-are-going-to-die) _te salutant_. Since it

has been discovered that the barbarous dialects of savage nations are

formed on the same principles with classical idioms, it has been found

easier to ascribe the beautiful organization of these languages to

stupidity and barbarism than to acknowledge our ignorance of the manner

in which it has been produced.”

Humboldt says: “It is acknowledged that almost everywhere the Indian

idioms display greater richness and more delicate gradations than might

be supposed from the uncultivated state of the people by whom they are

spoken.” Adair, who had forty years’ personal experience among them,

writing in 1775, claims that their languages give evidence of culture

and scope of expression impossible to have originated with uncivilized

tribes such as they were found. A singular circumstance concerning the

“syllabic alphabet,” presumed to have been invented by the Cherokee

Sequoyah (John Guest) about 1820, would imply an origin at a far more

ancient date. A stone engraved with this character was found by an

agent of the Bureau of Ethnology in 1889 lying under the skull of a

skeleton buried in an Indian mound, with every evidence of antiquity,

on the north side of the Tennessee River, in the immediate vicinity

of one of the old Cherokee towns. This is of more special interest as

Adair and also Buttrick, in his “Antiquities,” record that the Indians

always claim to have once had scriptures, or a book, which for their

sins they had lost to the white race. May not these quaint characters

bear some relation to this tradition?

The “particular plural” for “we,” which it seems occurs in all these

languages, even found in the extinct Taensa dialect,--concerning the

genuineness of the grammar of which so much interest was elicited

some years ago on its publication, edited by Messieurs Adam and

Parisot,--seems hardly worth the discussion bestowed upon it, as

parallels exist in so many modern European languages,--_noi altri_,

_nous autres_, _nosotros_,--and even the vernacular may offer a

counterpart in “we-all” and “we-uns.”

Lord Monboddo’s idea, first presented to his attention by the blind

poet, the Reverend Thomas Blacklock, “that the first language among men

was music,” has an interesting suggestion of confirmation in the speech

of the Cherokees as described by Timberlake. “Their language is vastly

aspirated, and the accents so many and various you would often imagine

them to be singing in their common discourse.” Bartram says of the

sound of the Muscogulge (Muscogee) language, “The women in particular

speak so fine and musical as to represent the singing of birds.”

Gayarre states that the word “Choctaw” means “charming voice,” and was

hence applied to the tribe.]

[Footnote 3: Page 8. A letter from General Sir Jeffrey Amherst dated

Albany, August 13, 1761, gives a particularized account of these

destructive measures. “The country would have been impenetrable had it

been well defended. Fifteen towns and all the plantations have been

burned; above 1400 acres of corn, beans, and pease, etc., destroyed;

about 5000 people, men, women, and children, driven into the woods and

mountains, where having nothing to subsist upon they must either starve

or sue for peace.”

The fury of these measures after resistance had ceased is partly to be

explained as retaliation for the Cherokees’ breach of faith during the

preceding year, in the massacre of the garrison of Fort Loudon after

its capitulation, while on the march to Fort Prince George under the

safe conduct and escort of the principal chiefs. All the officers,

including the commandant, the unfortunate Captain Paul Demeré, fell

in this indiscriminate slaughter except one, Captain John Stuart,

who escaped and was afterward rewarded by a crown office for his

courage and constancy in the siege. He was of the family of Stuart of

Kincardine, Strathspey, Scotland, married into a South Carolina family,

and previous to the American Revolution lived in Charlestown, where

was born his son, who became an officer in the British army, General

Sir John Stuart, Count of Maida, winning the signal victory of Maida

over the French general Reynier, in Calabria in 1806. The garrison

of Fort Loudon has a special interest as the first military force of

civilization giving battle on the soil which is now Tennessee, its

earliest sacrifice in the cause of human progress.]

[Footnote 4: Page 13. Several of the elder writers describe such

clever pastimes among the Indians. Timberlake records that while in

the Cherokee country he witnessed this favorite pantomime, as well as

another equally diverting, called “Taking the pigeons at roost.”]

[Footnote 5: Page 31. It is said that the Indians when discovered had

among them no methods of ascertaining weight, and bought and sold

exclusively by measure. Hence the incongruity of this locution in their

speech has furnished an additional argument to the supporters of the

theory of their Hebraic origin, suggesting an idiomatic survival of

forgotten customs.]

[Footnote 6: Page 56. So extreme and well founded was the prevalent

terror of the torture by the Indians that once captured no immediate

sacrifice was too great to evade the grimmer possibility. General David

Stewart of Garth gives an instance in this region among the British

troops at this time. “Montgomerie’s Highlanders were often employed

in small detached expeditions. In these marches they had numberless

skirmishes with the Indians and with the irregular troops of the enemy.

Several soldiers of this and other regiments fell into the hands of

the Indians, being taken in an ambush. Allan Macpherson, one of these

soldiers, witnessing the miserable fate of several of his fellow

prisoners, who had been tortured to death by the Indians, and seeing

them preparing to commence the same operations upon himself, made signs

that he had something to communicate. An interpreter was brought.

Macpherson told them that provided his life was spared for a few

minutes he would communicate the secret of an extraordinary medicine

which, if applied to the skin, would cause it to resist the strongest

blow of a tomahawk or sword, and if they would allow him to go to the

woods with a guard to collect the plants proper for this medicine,

he would prepare it and allow the experiment to be tried on his own

neck by the strongest and most expert warrior among them. This story

easily gained upon the superstitious credulity of the Indians, and

the request of the Highlander was instantly complied with. Being sent

into the woods he soon returned with such plants as he chose to pick

up. Having boiled these herbs, he rubbed his neck with their juice,

and laying his head upon a log of wood desired the strongest man among

them to strike at his neck with his tomahawk, when he would find that

he could not make the slightest impression. An Indian, leveling a blow

with all his might, cut with such force that the head flew off to the

distance of several yards. The Indians were fixed in amazement at their

own credulity and the address with which the prisoner had escaped the

lingering death prepared for him; but instead of being enraged at the

escape of their victim, they were so pleased with his ingenuity that

they refrained from inflicting further cruelties on their remaining

prisoners.”]

[Footnote 7: Page 84. The disposition to compete for the Cherokee trade

had earlier been the occasion of much remonstrance from Governor Glen

of South Carolina to Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia during

their respective incumbency. The vexed question then seeming set at

rest was revived later by Lieutenant-Governor Fauquier of Virginia. In

his allusion to the subject, Jock Lesly possibly included Lieutenant

Henry Timberlake of Byrd’s Virginia Regiment, who had recently been on

a visit to the Cherokee country, quitting it in the early spring, on

March 10, 1762. But it is only fair to Lieutenant Timberlake to say

that the Indians were pressing him to induce Virginia to open a trade

with the Cherokees.]

[Footnote 8: Page 182. Timberlake uses the spelling “Kanagatucko;” the

name appears otherwise signed to the Articles of Capitulation of Fort

Loudon, but of course in each instance the spelling is phonetic.]

[Footnote 9: Page 244. This incantation is an extract from one of the

most singular of the ancient Sacred Formulæ of the Cherokees collected

by Mr. James Mooney for the Smithsonian Institution.]

[Footnote 10: Page 282. The title of Emperor of the Cherokee Nation

was conferred by British authority on Moy Toy through Sir Alexander

Cuming in 1730, but this proved no hindrance to the chief’s acceptance

of the same high title under the authority of the French government

in 1736 through its emissary among the tribe, Christian Priber, a

German Jesuit. Adair recounts some details of the latter’s efforts to

materialize Iberville’s old scheme of unifying the Indian tribes, which

were similar to the experiences in the same emprise of the earlier

emissaries, and the futile ventures of Baron Dejean, Louis Latinac, and

Laroche a score of years later.]

[Footnote 11: Page 336. The history of the Indians is not a little

complicated by the repetition of their names from one generation to

another and of their war-titles, sometimes to be differentiated only

by the names of their respective towns as a suffix, as Outacite (the

Man-killer), of Citico, or Quorinnah (the Raven), of Huwhassee. Even

their sobriquets are not to be relied upon for further identification.

Another Mingo Push-koosh flourished among the Choctaws a generation

earlier, and was the half brother of the celebrated Shulashummashtabe

(Red Shoes), who is himself often confounded with the chief of the

Coosawdas, also known as “Red Shoes,” long afterward, being active in

Indian politics as late as 1789. The Choctaw “Red Shoes” enjoyed great

esteem among the British, as did also the Cherokee “Little Carpenter”

(more accurately translated as “Superlative Wood-carver”), in whose

honor, indeed, an English ship was named and a British stronghold,

before the Cherokee War, Fort Atta-Kulla-Kulla.]

[Footnote 12: Page 368. The climate of this southern region at this

period seems to have won some renown for its extremes. An officer’s

letter from Fort Prince George, dated January 9, 1761, says: “I have

been several winters in the north of Scotland and do not think I

have ever felt it colder there than here at this time; the snow is

in general three quarters of a yard deep, attended with very sharp

frosts.” As to the summer temperature, Governor Ellis has left it of

record in a letter to John Ellis, Esq., F.R.S., dated Georgia, July

17, 1758, that he thought the inhabitants of this section “breathed

hotter air than any other people upon earth.” He takes pains to state

that he made his observations with the same thermometer that he had had

with him in the equatorial parts of Africa and in the Leeward Islands.

Hewatt, the historian, ventures to protest, albeit deferring to the

accuracy and learning of the erudite and traveled governor, and says

that the mercury never so far exceeded the bounds of reason in South

Carolina, and implies that he believed that these eccentricities were

very rare in Georgia.]

The Riverside Press

_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced

quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and

otherwise left unbalanced.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant

preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not

changed.

A table of contents was added for convenience.

Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.