come of her neighbors; where had they gone, and
how had they fared, and where was she herself going in this journey to
Chote,--a name, a mere name, heard by chance, and repeated at haphazard,
to which she had committed the future.

This fresh anxiety served to renew her attention. Willinawaugh, still
rehearsing the griefs of his people, and the perfidy, as he construed
it, of the government, was detailing the perverse distortion of the
English compliance with their treaty to erect a great defensive work in
the Cherokee nation--the heart of the nation--to aid them in their wars
on Indian enemies, and to protect their country and the non-combatants
when the warriors should be absent in the service of their allies, the
English. Such a work had the government indeed erected, on the south
bank of the Tennessee River, mounted with twelve great cannon, not five
miles from Chote, old town, and there, one hundred and fifty miles in
advance of Anglo-American civilization, lay within it now the garrison
of two hundred English soldiers!

Odalie's heart gave a great bound! She felt already safe. To be under
the protection of British cannon once more! To listen to an English
voice! Her brain was a-whirl. She could hear the drums beat. She could
hear the sentry's challenge. She even knew the countersign--"God save
the king!"--they were saying that to-night at Fort Loudon as the guard
turned out;--she did not know it; she never knew it; she was only sure
of it!

Willinawaugh had never heard of the agriculturist who sowed dragon's
teeth and whose crop matured into full-armed soldiers. But he acutely
realized this plight as he detailed how the Cherokees had protested, and
had sent a "talk" (letter) to the Earl of Loudon, who had been at the
time commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, setting forth
the fact that the Cherokees did not like the presence of so many white
people among them as the two hundred soldiers and the settlers that had
gathered about the place. The military occupation made the fort a
coercion and menace to the Cherokee people, and they requested him to
take away the soldiers and relinquish the fort with its twelve great
guns and other munitions of war to the Cherokee nation,--to which
suggestion the Earl of Loudon had seemed to turn a deaf ear.

Alexander MacLeod, deliberating gravely, realized that under such
circumstances the fort would ultimately be used against the English
interest that it was des