elds, all
burnt! Great was the wrath of Willinawaugh!

This talk, however, was less to the taste of Choo-qualee-qualoo than
questions and answers concerning the young sentinel, whom the Cherokees
had named _Sekakee_, "the grasshopper," as he was so loquacious; she
often paused to put the strings of red beads into her mouth, and to gaze
away at the glittering reaches of the river with large liquid eyes,
sending now and then a glance at the window where that gruff young
person leaned on his firelock. Savanukah's wife said _Sekakee_ must be
hungry, Choo-qualee-qualoo told Odalie. Was _Sekakee_ hungry? She would
bring him some beans. Savanukah said they would all be hungry soon. And
the fort would be the Indians', and there would be nobody in the land
but the Cherokees, and the French to carry on trade with them--was
Odalie not glad that she was French?--for there had been great fighting
with the English colonel's men, and Willinawaugh had told her to tell
the captains English both that fact: much blood did they shed of their
own blood, as red as their own red coats!

Odalie regarded this merely as an empty boast, the triumphs of
Montgomery's campaign rife this day in the garrison, but it made her
tremble to listen. Nevertheless, she had the nerve to walk with
Choo-qualee-qualoo almost to the water-side, near the shadowy covert of
the dense woods. Nothing lurked there now,--no flickering feather, no
fiercely gay painted face. Her confidence seemed the ally of the
Indians. The French captive of the Carolina Scotchman would be to them
like a spy in the enemy's camp!

Perhaps the ordeal made the greater draughts on the courage of the men
who stood in the shelter of the works and sighted the guns. The tension
grew so great as she lingered there in the shadows that cold drops stood
on Demere's face, and the hand with which Stuart held the firelock
trembled.

"It's a woman that can't get enough of anything," O'Flynn muttered to
himself. "I'll have the lockjaw in me lungs, for I'm gittin' so as I
can't move me chist to catch me breath."

But Odalie turned at last, and still signaling anxiously to the sentry,
as if to implore silence and forbearance, she crossed the open space
with her swift, swinging step, climbed the red clay slope among the
spiked staves of the fraises, knelt down, slipped through the embrasure,
and was lifted to her feet by Demere, while the gunners stood by looking
on, and smiling and ready to cry over h