aten captain roared again and smote the table till
the bottles reeled.

"I say, Sir Frank, that's good--damned good! So you have him crimped
here in his own house, stuffing him like a penned capon before you wring
his neck. Ah! ha! ha! But 'tis to be hoped you have his legs well tied.
If he be any son of my old mad-bull Roger Ireton, you'll hardly hang him
peacefully like a trussed fowl before the fire."

The baronet smiled and said: "I'll be your warrant for his safety! We've
had him well guarded from the first, and to-night he is behind a barred
door with Mr. Stair's overseer standing sentry before it. But as for
that, he's barely out of bed from my pin-prick."

Having thus disposed of me, they let me be and came to the graver
business of the moment, with a toast to lay the dust before it. It was
Falconnet who gave the toast.

"Here's to our bully redskins and their king--How do you call him,
Captain Stuart? Ocon--Ocona--"

"Oconostota is the Chelakee of it, though on the border they know him
better as 'Old Hop.' Fill up, gentlemen, fill up; 'tis a dry business,
this. Allow me, Mr. Stair; and you, Mr.--er--ah--Pengarden. This same
old heathen is the king's friend now, but, gentlemen all, I do assure
you he's the very devil himself in a copper-colored skin. 'Twas he who
ambushed us in '60, and but for Attakullakulla--"

"Oh, Lord!" groaned Falconnet. "I say, Captain, drown the names in the
wine and we'll drink them so. 'Tis by far the easiest way to swallow
them."

By this, the grizzled captain's mention of the old Fort Loudon massacre,
I knew him for that same John Stuart of the Highlanders who, with
Captain Damare, had so stoutly defended the frontier fort against the
savages twenty years before; knew him and wondered I had not sooner
placed him. When I was but a boy, as I could well remember, he had been
king's man to the Cherokees; a sort of go-between in times of peace, and
in the border wars a man the Indians feared. But now, as I was soon to
learn, he was a man for us to fear.

"'Tis carried through at last," he went on, when the toast was drunk.
And then he stopped and held up a warning finger. "This business will
not brook unfriendly ears. Are we safe to talk it here, Mr. Stair?"

It was Falconnet who answered.

"Safe as the clock. You passed my sentry in the road?"

"Yes."

"He is the padlock of a chain that reaches round the house. Let's have
your news, Captain."

"As I was saying, the India