usketry from the Royal Scots, the hissing of the hand grenades flung
bursting into the jungles of the laurel. Instead, all the clifty defiles
of the ranges were filled with the roar of flames and the crackling of
burning timbers as town after town was given to the firebrand, and the
homeless, helpless Cherokees frantically fleeing to the densest coverts
of the wilderness,--that powerful truculent tribe!--sought for shelter
like those "feeble folk the conies" in the hollows of the rocks.

Thus it was that Digatiski, the Hawk, of Eupharsee Town, long the terror
of the southern provinces, must needs sit idle, forlorn, frenzied with
rage and grief, in a remote and lofty cavity of a great cliff, and
looking out over range and valley and river of this wild and beautiful
country, see fire and sword work their mission of destruction upon it.
By day a cloud of smoke afar off bespoke the presence of the soldiery.
At night a tremulous red light would spring up amidst the darkness of
the valley, and expanding into a great yellow flare summon mountains and
sky into an infinitely sad and weird revelation of the landscape, as the
great storehouses of corn were burned to the ground, leaving the hapless
owners to starvation.

His pride grudged his very eyes the sight of this humiliation, for
despite the oft-repeated assertion of the improvidence of the Indian
character, these public granaries, whence by the primitive Cherokee
government food was dispensed gratis to all the needy, were always full,
and their destruction meant national annihilation or subjugation. After
one furtive glance at the purple obscurities of the benighted world he
would bow his head, and with a smothered groan ask of the ada-wehi,
"Where is it now, Attusah?"

The young warrior, half reclining at the portal of the niche, would lift
himself on one elbow,--the glow of the little camp-fire within the
recess on his feather-crested head, his wildly painted face, the twenty
strings of roanoke passed tight like a high collar around his neck,
thence hanging a cascade of beads over his chest, the devious arabesques
of tattooing on his bare, muscular arms, the embroideries of his
buckskin raiment and gaudy quiver,--and searching with his gay young
eyes through the stricken country reply, "Cowetchee," "Sinica,"
"Tamotlee," whichever town might chance to be in flames.

Doubtless Attusah realized equally the significance of the crisis. But a
certain joyous irresponsibility