rly good-will, a resumption of the quarrel on
the old invalid scores was impossible. Perhaps some token of their
displeasure might have been visited upon her who had inaugurated so bold
and extensive a wild goose chase, but she looked so small as she sat by
the cannon weeping her large tears that she disarmed retaliation.

So small she looked, indeed, that certain of the young blades, who filed
in to gaze upon her and filed out again, would not believe that she
could have invented so large a French invasion, and for several days
they futilely scouted the woods in search of some errant "parlez-vous,"
all of whom, however, were very discreetly tucked away within the strong
defenses of Fort Toulouse.

The young gunner alone was implacable. He was the first of the returning
force to reach Fort Prince George, and he carried with him all the
powder that had been sent under mistake to the Blue Lick Station,
together with the tear-shotted cartridges, whose problematic interior
damage he explained to the amazed, chagrined, and nonplussed commandant.

"Oh, sor," the gunner said in conclusion, solemnly shaking his head,
"that gurl, sor!--she is a wily one! An' I should n't be surprised, sor,
if she is a dale taller than she looks!"

The Blue Lick Station in time recovered its equilibrium, and was
afterward prone to protest that of all frontier communities it bore the
palm for the efficiency of its "linguister."

A VICTOR AT CHUNGKE

At Tennessee Town, on the Tennessee River, there used to be a great
chungke-yard. It was laid off in a wide rectangular area nine hundred
feet long, two feet lower than the surface of the ground, level as a
floor, and covered with fine white sand. The ancient, curiously shaped
chungke-stones, fashioned with much labor from the hardest rock, perfect
despite immemorial use, kept with the strictest care, exempt by law from
burial with the effects of the dead, were the property of this Cherokee
town, and no more to be removed thence than the council-house,--the
great rotunda at one side of the "beloved square," built upon a mound in
the centre of the village.

Surely no spot could seem more felicitously chosen for the favorite
Indian game. The ground rose about the chungke-yard like the walls of an
amphitheatre, on every side save the slope toward the "beloved square"
and the river, furnishing an ideal position of vantage for spectators
were they even more numerous than the hundreds of Chero