llect a certain smart young soldier, who as orderly had one day
accompanied Captain Stuart on a visit of ceremony to Oconostota, at his
seat of government at Chote--old town. While the young orderly had led
the horse of the English Captain up and down before the door of the
chief's great council-house, Choo-qualee-qualoo had been set to ask him
some questions, and as she told this the little minx laughed with her
sharp white teeth shining, and looked like some sly little animal,
malevolent, yet merry, and of much grace. Willinawaugh, she continued,
believed that he had been duped by MacLeod into affording him and his
family safe conduct on his journey hither, under the pretext that he was
French, and therefore an enemy to the English, whom Willinawaugh hated;
for the newcomer, MacLeod, and his brother, had been suffered to build a
house and settle here among the English, while if Frenchmen they would
have been hung as spies at the great gate of the fort or sent direct to
Charlestown as prisoners. So Willinawaugh had set her to weave her toils
about the young soldier and discover the truth from him, as he walked
the officer's fine horse up and down, and the tall English Captain and
the great warrior, Oconostota, smoked their pipes in the council
chamber. Thus it had chanced that the unsuspicious orderly, free with
his tongue, as a young man is apt to be in the presence of a pretty
girl, told all that Choo-qualee-qualoo asked to know, as far as he knew
it himself, and sooth to say, a trifle further. He gave forth the fact
that MacLeod was English--that is Scotch, which he made as one of the
same tribe, and so was the brother. But the wife was French--he himself
had overheard her talking the frog-eaters' lingo--and, by George, she
was a stunner! The baby was hers, and thus a mixture of English and
French; as for the cat, he could not undertake to pronounce upon the
animal's nationality, for he had not the pleasure of the acquaintance of
its parents.

Choo-qualee-qualoo laid down this last proposition with a doubting
gravity, for the young man had promulgated it as if with a sense of its
importance and a weighty soberness, although he laughed at most that he
said himself and at everything that any one else said.

He saw fit to remark that he did not understand how that sober-minded
Sawney--meaning the Scotchman--had ever contrived to capture such a fine
woman, but that was always the way with these dull prigs. Now as for
s