designated as the _Ayrate_ settlements signified the
lower country,--they were received here, and Stuart, from the moment of
their entrance, knew that their mission was hopeless.

They had recently been ordered to demand the surrender to them of
certain notable Cherokees, for having been concerned in the distant
border murders, and who lived in the towns of Citico and Tellico hard
by, close at hand to both Chote and Fort Loudon. They realized that this
measure was at once displeasing and impracticable to the kings, whose
authority could not compass the surrender of their tribesmen to the
justice of the gibbet, after the expiatory methods of the English, and
who foresaw that such compliance would but provoke reprisal on the
paleface and further outbreaks.

Sitting motionless on buffalo rugs, a number of which were spread over
the floor of the room, on which the two officers were also invited to be
seated, the Indians advanced none of the equivocal statements and
doubtful promises and fallacious expectations of peace as heretofore,
but kept their eyes fixed upon the ground, while the officers once more
expressed their earnest remonstrances and made their summary demand,
implicitly obeying their orders, although this extreme and impolitic
measure was secretly deprecated by both.

The "talk" was conducted by means of the services of an interpreter, an
Indian, who stood behind the great chiefs and recited, now in Cherokee
and now in English, and always with a wooden, expressionless accent, as
if he were a talking machine and understood not a word for which he
furnished the equivalent, in deference to the great company not
permitting his mind to take part in the deeper significance of the ideas
they interchanged. He kept his eyes fixed upon the blank wall opposite,
and effaced his individuality as far as possible. But after the first
sentences of merely formal greeting, the wooden clapper of the
interpreter's tongue vibrated back and forth with Cherokee only, for the
Indian chiefs said nothing to be rendered into English. Silent and
stony they sat, looking neither to the right nor left, unmoved by
urgency, stolid to remonstrance, and only when Demere with a flash of
fire suggested that Governor Lyttleton of South Carolina, or General
Amherst the new "head-man," who was now commander-in-chief of the army,
would soon take fierce measures to retaliate these enormities, there was
a momentary twinkle in the crafty eyes of Oconos