The sun was going down. Far, far purple mountains, that they might never
have seen but for that great clifty gateway, were bathed in the glory of
the last red suffusion of the west; the evening star of an unparalleled
whiteness pulsated in the amber-tinted lucidity of the sky. The
fragrance of the autumn woods was more marked on the dank night air. One
could smell the rich mould along a watercourse near at hand, the branch
from a spring bubbling up in the solid rock hard by. Odalie had seated
herself on the horizontal ledge at the base of one of the crags and had
thrown back her hood, against which her head rested. Her large eyes were
soft and lustrous, but pensive and weary.

"Rest, Odalie, while Hamish and I make the fire, and then you can fix
the things for supper," her husband admonished her.

It was the first time that they had halted that day, and dinner had been
but the fragments of breakfast eaten while on the march. There had been
a sudden outbreak of the Cherokee Indians which had driven them from the
more frequented way where they feared pursuit,--this, and the fate of
the brave who had sought to lure Hamish to his death last night with
the mimicry of the gobbler, and was killed in consequence himself. They
could not judge whether he had been alone or one of a party; whether his
body might be discovered and his death avenged by the death or capture
of them all; whether he had been a scout, thrown out to discover the
direction they took, and his natural blood-thirstiness had overmastered
his instructions, and he must needs seek to kill the boy before his
return with his news.

With this more recent fear that they were followed they had not to-day
dared to build a fire lest its smoke betray to the crafty observation of
the Indians, although at a great distance, their presence in this remote
quarter of the wilderness, far even from the Indian war-path, that,
striking down the valley between the Cumberland range and the eastern
mountains, was then not only the road that the Indians followed to
battle, but the highway of traffic and travel, the only recognized and
known path leading from the Cherokee settlements south of the Tennessee
River through this great uninhabited park or hunting-ground to the
regions of other Indian tribes on the Scioto and to Western Virginia.
Now, however, rest and refreshment were necessary; even more imperative
was the need of a fire as a protection to the camp against the
encroa