rous dusk, had approached very near and struck her
dumb and turned her to stone. It had approached so near that she could
see its expression change as the sound of the words spoken about the
fireside arose on the air. Her mental faculties were rallying from the
torpor which still paralyzed her physical being; she understood the
reason for this facial change, and by a mighty effort of the will
summoned all her powers to avail herself of it.

Alexander MacLeod, glancing up with a casual laugh on his face, was
almost stunned to see a full-armed and painted Cherokee rise up suddenly
from among the bushes about the foot of the cliff. Standing distinctly
outlined against the softly tinted mountain landscape, which was
opalescent in its illumined hues, faint and fading, and extending his
hand with a motion of inquiry toward Odalie, the savage demanded in a
lordly tone,--"Flinch? Flanzy?"

As in a dream MacLeod beheld her, nodding her head in silent
acquiescence,--as easily as she might were she humming a tune and hardly
cared to desist from melody for words. She could not speak!

The Cherokee, his face smeared with vermilion, with a great white circle
around one eye and a great black circle around the other, looked not
ill-pleased, yet baffled for a moment. "Me no talk him," he observed.

[Illustration: "What more wonderful? What more fearful?"]

He had never heard of Babel, poor soul, but he was as subject to the
inconvenience of the confusion of tongues as if he had had an active
share in the sacrilegious industry of those ambitious architects who
builded in the plains of Shinar.

"But I can speak English too," said Odalie.

"Him?" said the Cherokee, "and him?" pointing at Alexander and then at
Hamish--at Hamish, with his recollection of that dead Indian, a
Cherokee, lying, face downward, somewhere there to the northward under
the dark trees, his blood crying aloud for the ferocious reprisal in
which his tribe were wont to glut their vengeance.

"Both speak French," said Odalie.

The Indian gazed upon her doubtfully. He had evidently only a few
disconnected sentences of English at command, although he understood far
more than he could frame, but he could merely discern and distinguish
the sound of the admired "Flanzy." Odalie realized with a shiver that it
was only this trifle that had preserved the lives of the whole party.
For even previous to the present outbreak and despite the stipulations
of their treaties wi