o notice
his presence, they kindled anew with friction of bits of poplar or white
oak the fire for the new year, the _cheera_, the "sacred flame," to bear
it outside to distribute it to the assembled people of Nilaque Great.
Without was summer; the trees were full of green leaves; canoes were
glancing along the shimmering river; the "beloved square" was crowded
with braves,--he saw their feathered crests wave and glisten; the wind
was blowing fresh and cool; the sun shone.

And suddenly it was shining in his face, as it came up over the Great
Smoky Mountains, sending its first long slanting wintry beams through
the narrow portal to the hearth where he had lain asleep before the
ashes of the once "sacred fire," covered with the fresh ashes of last
night's vigil, for they too were dead. He staggered to his feet and went
out into the glistening dawn of this snowy sunlit day, hardly able to
reconcile its aspect with the summer-tide scene he had just quitted. Now
and again he paused, half-bewildered, as if unfamiliar with the pathetic
miseries of the old "waste town"--the scene in his mind savored far more
of reality.

The necessity of caring for the pack-horse, perhaps better than aught
else, served to restore his faculties. He found it easy now to climb
down the jagged face of the bluffs of the river bank, whence the snow
had vanished, for in the changeable southern climate a sudden thaw had
begun in the earlier hours and now the warm sun was setting all the
trees and eaves adrip. As he stood below the cliff on the sandy slope
whence the snow had slipped down into the river, the volume of which the
storm of last night would much increase after the long drought of the
summer, he carefully examined the horse to ascertain what injuries he
might have sustained; a few abrasions on the right flank seemed to be
all, until the animal moved, a bit stiffly with the near fore leg. This
attracted Barnett's attention to a gash on the knee received doubtless
when the horse first fell on the ground,--a queer gash, long, jagged,
unaccountable, as if it had been made by a dull blade. Glancing down to
search the gravel, the pack-man discerned, half-imbedded in the sand,
the edge of a fragment of a knife, a scalping-knife, broken half in two;
and there, lying not three yards away, was a handle attached to a belt
heavily wrought with roanoke,--only a bit of the belt,--and the other
half of the knife.

The pack-man's hand trembled and his f