-mere savages,--but
it cut him to the heart. So long they had been his friends, his
associates, as the chief furniture of the world!

He busied himself with the affairs of his firm at Charlestown, but for a
time he was much changed, much cast down, for he had a sense of
responsibility, and his conscience was involved, and although he had
sought to do good he had only wrought harm, and irreparable harm. He
grew old very fast, racked as he was by rheumatism, a continual reminder
of the stern experiences of his flight. He had other reminders in his
unquiet thoughts, but he grew garrulous at a much later date. Years
intervened before he was wont to sit in front of the warehouse, with his
stick between his knees, his hands clasped on the round knob at its top,
his chin on his hands, and cheerily chirp of his days in "the Nation."
The softening touch of time brought inevitably its glamours and its
peace; his bleared old eyes, fixed on the glittering expanse of the
harbor, beheld with pleasure, instead of the sea, the billowy reaches of
that mighty main of mist-crested mountains known as the Great Smoky
Range, and through all his talk, and continually through his mind,
flitted the bright animated presence of the victor at chungke.

THE CAPTIVE OF THE ADA-WEHI

Attusah was obviously an impostor. Many, however, had full faith in his
supernatural power, and often he seemed to believe in his own spectral
account of himself.

"_Tsida-wei-yu_!" (I am a great ada-wehi![6]) the young warrior would
cry with his joyous grandiloquent gesture, waving his many braceleted
right arm at full length as he held himself proudly erect.
"_Akee-o-hoosa! Akee-o-hoosa!"_ (I am dead). Then triumphantly, "And
behold I am still here."

Attusah had gone unscathed through that bloody campaign of 1761 in which
the Cherokees suffered such incredible rigors. After their total defeat
at Etchoee the Indians could offer no further resistance to the troops
of Colonel Grant, who triumphantly bore the authority of the British
king from one end of the Cherokee country to the other, for there was no
more powder to be had in the tribe. The French, from whom they had hoped
a supply, failed them at their utmost need, and now those massive crags
of the Great Smoky Mountains, overhanging the Tennessee River, no longer
echoed the "whoo-whoop!" of the braves, the wild cry of the Highlanders,
"Claymore! Claymore!" the nerve-thrilling report of the volleys of
m