the fact that
she was not French, but of Carolinian birth and parentage, and the
further fact--and his serious face relaxed--that she, herself, was the
commandant at MacLeod's Station, and that Sandy and Hamish, Fifine and
"Dill," were the mere minions of her power.

She found discretion the better part of valor, and thought it wise to
laugh a little at herself and her own pride, although the dimples came
and went in very red cheeks, and her eyes were so bright as they rested
on the merry face of the big blond officer that they might be said to
flash. She diverted with difficulty Hamish's attention from Captain
Demere's half-finished map on the table at the other end of the room,
over which the boy had been poring during the entire interview, and then
they took their leave.

Little did any of the party realize how important the mistaken
impression of the Cherokee women was to prove!

CHAPTER VII

The winter wore gradually away. While the snows were still on the
ground, and the eastern mountain domes were glittering white against a
pale blue sky, all adown the nearer slopes the dense forests showed a
clear garnet hue, that betokened the swelling of congregated masses of
myriads of budding boughs. Even the aspect of more distant ranges
bespoke a change, in the dull soft blue which replaced the hard
lapis-lazuli tint that the chill, sharp weather had known. For the cold
had now a reviviscent tang--not the bleak, benumbing, icy deadness of
the winter's thrall. And while the flames still flared on the hearth,
and the thumping of the batten and the creak of the treadle resounded
most of the day from the little shed-room where Odalie worked at her
loom, and the musical whir of her spinning-wheel enlivened all the
fire-lit evenings as she sat in the chimney corner, the thaws came on,
and brought the mountain snows down the Tennessee River with a great
rushing turbulence, and it lifted a wild, imperious, chanting voice into
the primeval stillness. A delicate vernal haze began to pervade the
air, and a sweet placidity, as if all nature were in a dream, not
dead,--an expectant moment, the crisis of development. Now and again
Odalie and Fifine would come to the door, summoned by a loud crackling
sound, as of a terrible potency, and watch wincingly the pervasive flare
of the great elastic yellow and vermilion flames springing into the air
from the bonfires of the piles of cane as the cleared land was
transformed from th