lints and then filled with the solid earth. He was trying to
tell Demere that he was afraid something would happen to that second gun
in the barbette battery on the northeast bastion, for the metal always
rang with a queer vibration, and he had had a dream that Oconostota had
overcharged and fired it, and it had exploded; and as Demere was
laughing at this folly Stuart realized suddenly the fact that the day
was coming in to him again there in his friend's place, as it would come
no more to Demere, though dawning even now at Taliquo Plains where he
lay. Instead of that essential presence, on which Stuart had leaned and
relied, and which in turn had leaned and relied on him, there was in his
mind but a memory, every day to grow dimmer.

Nevertheless, he rose, refreshed and strengthened with the stimulus of
that unreal association, which was yet so like reality, with the comrade
of his dreams. The orderly instincts of a soldier, as mechanical as the
functions of respiration, enabled him, with the use of fresh linen from
his friend's relinquished effects, to obliterate the traces of the
experiences of the previous day, and fresh and trim, with that precise
military neatness that was so imposing to the poor Indian, who could not
compass its effect, he went out to meet the half-king with a gait
assured and steady, a manner capable and confident, and an air of
executive ability, that bade fair for the success of any scheme to which
he might lend his aid.

Now and again he marked a glance of deep appreciation from the subtle
Atta-Kulla-Kulla,[13] the result of much cogitation and effort at mental
appraisement. He feared that important developments were to ensue, and
after breakfast, at which meal he was treated like a guest and an equal,
and not in the capacity of slave, as were most captives, his host
notified him that his presence would be necessary at a council to be
held at Chote.

Too acute, far too acute was Atta-Kulla-Kulla not to recognize and
comment upon the different aspect of life at Fort Loudon. "The red man
cannot, without use, become capable of handling the advantages of the
white man," he said in excuse of the anarchy everywhere, with all the
riot and grotesqueness and discomfort incident to being out of one's
sphere. At Chote the Cherokees would have seemed as easy, as
appropriate, as graceful, as native as the deer.

And at Chote Oconostota seemed as native as the fox. There he sat on
the great buffalo ru