ressed himself to the task of making light of the matter to Odalie in
lieu of other solace.

"_Tu ne_ ought _pas l'avoir fait_," he gravely admonished her in his
queer French. "_Tu_ ought known better, Odalie!"

"Known what better?" demanded Odalie, resenting reprimand in a very
un-squawlike fashion.

"_Marcher_ in shoes! _Mong Dew!_ _Ces souliers_ couldn't have been made
_pour marcher_ in!" he retorted, with a funny grimace.

The facial contortion seemed suddenly to anger Willinawaugh, who had
chanced to observe them; to suggest recollections that he resented, and
the reminder shared in his disfavor. He abruptly wreathed his fierce
countenance into a simulacrum of Hamish's facetious mug; he shrugged his
shoulders with a genuine French twist; and anything more incongruously
and grotesquely frightful and less amusing could hardly be imagined.

"Fonny! vely fonny! Flanzy!" he exclaimed harshly. "Balon Des
Johnnes!"[5]

His unwilling companions gazed at him with as genuine a terror as if the
devil himself had entered into him and thus expressed his presence among
them. Willinawaugh abruptly discontinued his "fonny" grimace, that had a
very ferocity of rebuke, and leaning from his horse with an expression
of repudiation, spat upon the ground. Then he began to talk about Baron
Des Johnnes and his sudden disappearance from the Cherokee Nation.

At Chote, it seemed, was this gay and facetious Frenchman, this
all-accomplished Baron Des Johnnes, who could speak seven different
Indian languages with equal facility, to say nothing of a trifle or two
such as English, Spanish, German, and French, of course!--at Chote,
City of Refuge, where, if he had shed the blood of the native Cherokee
on his own threshold, his life would have been sacred even from the
vengeance of the Indian's brother! And suddenly came the Carolina
Colonel Sumter, returning with an Indian delegation that had been to
Charlestown, and found the Frenchman here. And with Colonel Sumter was
Oconostota, king of the Cherokees, and other head-men, who had just
signed a treaty at Charlestown, promising to kill or arrest any
Frenchman discovered within the Cherokee Nation. And who so appalled as
Oconostota, to see his friend, the gay Baron Des Johnnes, lying on a
buffalo skin before the fire, smoking his pipe in the chief's own
wigwam. And when Colonel Sumter demanded his arrest Oconostota refused
and pleaded the sanctity of the place--the City of Refuge. And Baron