attitude
of affairs, so rudely, so disastrously altered. Suddenly his tone
changed to a personal note.

"But it was ill with you, starving with your young men, in this
place--long days, heap hungry."

"They seem happy days, now," said Stuart drearily, rousing himself.

"And to-morrow--and yet next day?" asked Atta-Kulla-Kulla.

Stuart stirred uneasily. "I can only die with what grace and courage I
can muster," he said reluctantly. He glanced about him with restless
eyes, like a hunted creature. "I cannot escape."

He looked up in sudden surprise. The Indian was standing now, gazing
down at him with a benignity of expression which warranted the character
of bold and forceful mind, and broad and even humane disposition, which
this Cherokee had won of his enemies in the midst of the bloodshed and
the treachery and the hideous cruelty of the warfare in which he was so
much concerned.

"John Stuart," he said, "have I not called you my friend? Have I not
given all I possess of wealth to save your life? Do I not value it, and
yet it is yours!"

Stuart had forgotten the chief's words that Christmas night at the great
gates, but they came back to him as Atta-Kulla-Kulla repeated them,
anew.

"I know your heart, and I do not always forget! I do not _always_
forget!"

In Stuart's amazement, in the abrupt reaction, he could hardly master
the details of the unfolded plan. The Cherokee declared he had made up
his mind to a stratagem, such as might baffle even the designs of
Oconostota. He doubted his own power to protect his prisoner, should the
king learn that Stuart still refused his services in the expedition to
Fort Prince George. Oconostota's heart was set upon the reduction of
this stronghold, and so was that of all the Cherokee nation. And yet
Atta-Kulla-Kulla could but perceive the flagrant futility of the
expectation of the surrender of the garrison on the coercion that
Oconostota had devised, especially as Fort Prince George was so much
nearer than Fort Loudon to communication with the white settlements. "I
contemplate the fact before it happens, they only afterward," he said.

On the pretext of diverting Stuart's mind after his glut of horrors, and
in affording him this recreation to secure an influence over him,
eminently in character with the wiles of the Cherokee statesman, he gave
out that he intended to take his prisoner with him for a few days on a
hunting expedition. The deer were now in prime condition