dst of the
Cherokee hunting-ground,--the whole country was but a great uninhabited
park heavily stocked with game, the Cherokee settlements being merely a
fringe upon its verges,--were vestiges of a previous population;
remains of works of defense like forts; fragments of pottery and other
manufactures; unfading allegorical paintings high on the face of
inaccessible cliffs; curious tiny stone sarcophagi containing pygmy
bones, the mysterious evidence of the actual existence of the
prehistoric "little people";[4] great burial mounds, with moldering
skeletons, and caves entombing mummies of splendid stature and long
yellow hair, evidently placed there ages ago, still wearing ornaments of
beads and metals, with remnants of strange fabrics of fibers and
feathers, and with weapons befitting a high rank and a warlike race. And
who were they? And whence did they come? They were always here, said
Willinawaugh. So said all the Cherokees. They were always here.

And whither did this unknown people go? The Indian shook his head, the
flicker of the fire on his painted face. They were gone, he said, when
the Tsullakee came. Long gone--long gone!

And alas, what was their fate? Odalie looked about at the violet night,
at the white moon and the dun shadows, with an upbraiding question, and
the night was silent with a keen chill fall of a frost. This was no new
world into which they were adventuring. It had witnessed tragedies. It
held death. It sealed its lips and embodied oblivion. Oh, for the hopes
of the future,--and oh, for the hopes of the dead and gone past!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: White.]

[Footnote B: It is known now as the Tennessee River.]

CHAPTER II

The next day when Odalie turned her face once more toward her Mecca of
home and peace she felt that she trod on air, although her shoes, ill
calculated for hard usage, had given way at last, and suffered the
thorns to pierce through the long rifts between sole and upper leather
and the stones to still further rend the gaping tatters. MacLeod would
not allow himself to comment on it even by a look, lest some
uncontrollable sympathy should force him to call a halt, now when he
felt that their lives depended on pressing forward and taking advantage
of the pacific mood of the Indian and the assumed character of French
traders to reach the English fort. Hamish, however, with a dark-eyed,
reproachful glance upbraided this apparently callous disregard, and then
add