ergy, and
presently Bayne was moved to leave the car and sit on a pile of wood near
the track, where, with his new acquaintance, he floundered over verbal
perversions of modern changes and lost significations of the language and
the contortions of Anglicized idioms, till at length he remarked that if
his interlocutor would act as interpreter he should like to converse on
the subject of these words with some old Cherokee who had never learned
English and had seldom heard it spoken.

The Qualla Boundary is sufficiently permeated with the spirit of the past
to feel that Time is the intimate possession of man. In that languid
environment there is no frenzy to utilize it lest it fly away. No man is
hurried into his grave within the reservation. It seemed not more strange
to the Indian than to the linguist to spend an hour or so in meditating
on a queer word that has lost its meaning amidst the surges of change.
The tribesman, lending himself readily to the investigation, suddenly
bethought himself of the ancient sibyl in her remote cabin on the steep
slant of the mountain, among the oldest and the least progressive
denizens of the Qualla Boundary.

Despite her arrogations of uncanny foreknowledge of human events, despite
her mystic lore of spells and charms, she had no faint presentiment of
the fact when Fate came boldly here and laid a hand on her door. None of
her familiars of the air, of the earth, gave her warning. Often she
thought of this afterward with bitterness, with upbraiding. The Mountain
Climber, _Atali Kuli_ (the ginseng), must, she was sure, have known of
this inimical ascent of the steeps, but he only burrowed the deeper, and
treacherously made no sign. As to _Agaluga Hegwa_, the great Whirlwind--she
would have bidden him arise quickly--"_Ha-usi-nuli datule-hu gu!_"--but
to what avail! Doubtless he was asleep somewhere on the sunny slopes. The
Ancient White Fire was covered with ash; not a glimmer did _Higayuli
Tsunega_ afford her, not a flicker. What a mockery was it that _Kananiski
Gigage_ should pretend to weave his web so fast, so fine, about the
child, and yet suffer its strong meshes to be burst apart by a mere word.

It was not the obsolete word which the visitor sought, for as he sat
outside her door in a chair, brought from within the cabin, while she
crouched on the threshold, and the interpreter perched on the stump of a
tree, an interruption occurred that flung those enigmatic syllables back
on