k from their hand the tool of negotiation, the weapon of the
head-men, and left only the tomahawk, the brute force of the tribe.
_Wahkane, wahkane!_ Was it not so when the treaty of Lyttleton was
broken and Montgomery, the Terrible, came in his stead? And when the
Cherokees had driven him out, and had taken their revenge on him for the
blood which had been shed in his first foray, of what avail to massacre
the garrison evacuating Fort Loudon, the possession of which had been
for so long a coveted boon, and thus preclude a peaceful rendering of
Fort Prince George and the expulsion of all English soldiery from
Cherokee soil!

Stuart, cautiously reticent, let him dilate upon all the wrongs wrought
in council by the disregard of his advice, only now and again dropping a
word as fuel to the flame. Cautiously, too, he led to the topic of the
regard and the admiration which the acute mind and the more enlightened
moral sentiment of this chief had excited in the English authorities,
and the service this official esteem would have been to the headstrong
nation if they had availed themselves of it. For was not Montgomery
instructed to offer them terms on _his_ account only? Their cruelty
Atta-Kulla-Kulla was brought to perceive had despoiled them of the
fruits of their victory; they might have, for all their patience and all
their valor, and all their statecraft, only a few more scalps here and
there; for presently the great English nation would be pressing again
from the south, with Fort Prince George as a base, and the war would be
to begin anew.

Deep into the night Atta-Kulla-Kulla dwelt on the treachery toward
him,--for he had known naught of the enterprise of the massacre--that
had so metamorphosed victory into disaster. The moonlight was coming in
at the window, reminding Stuart of that night when he lay at length on
the rug and consulted with Demere and anxiously foreboded events, the
news of Montgomery's departure from the country having fallen upon them
like a crushing blow. How prescient of disaster they had felt--but how
little they had appraised its force! Paler now was the moon, more
melancholy, desolate to the last degree as it glimmered on the
white-washed walls of the bare, sparely furnished room. His attention
had relaxed with fatigue as he still sat with his elbow on the table,
his head on his hand, vaguely hearing the Indian councillor droning out
his griefs of disregarded statesmanship and of the preferable