face of Colannah, and
bowed his straight back, and set an unwonted quiver in the nerves of his
old hand that had been firm in his heyday, and strong and crafty and
cruelly bloody. But his face now was softened with pleasure, and the
pride it expressed was almost tender.

"When a few years ago the Governor of South Carolina," he said
majestically, speaking in the Cherokee tongue but for the English names
(he pronounced the title "Goweno"), "offered to take some Cherokee
youths to train in his schools and make _scholars_ of them, I thanked
him with affection, for his thought was kind. But I told him that if he
would send some South Carolina youths to the Cherokee nation to be
trained, we would make _men_ of them!"

His blanket, curiously woven of feathers and wild hemp, requiring years
of labor in its intricate manufacture, fell away from one gaunt arm as
he lifted it to point with a kingly gesture at the young white man as
the illustration of his training. Every muscle of strength was on parade
in the splendid pose of hurling the great chungke-spear through the air,
as Otasite thus passed the interval while waiting the decision of the
umpire of the game. Then, with a laugh, oddly blent of affection and
pride, Colannah took his way down the slope and toward the
council-house: the council sat there much in these days of 1753, clouded
with smoke and perplexity.

Judging by this specimen of his athletic training to feats of prowess,
Colannah Gigagei might boast to the "Goweno" of South Carolina. It was
not, however, merely in muscle that the young captive excelled. As Abram
Varney thought of certain sterling manly traits of the highest type
which this poor waif had developed here in this incongruous environment,
one might suppose from the sheer force of heredity, he shook his head
silently, and his eyes clouded, the pulses of Charlestown still beating
in his veins. For he was wont to leave for months the treasures of his
trading-house, not merely a matter of trinkets and beads, but powder,
lead, and firearms, sufficient for accoutring an expedition for the
"war-path," and great store of cloths, cutlery, paints, in the charge of
this valiant gamester of chungke, stanch alike against friend and foe,
as safely as if its wealth were beneath his own eye. So insecure had
become the Cherokee allegiance to the government that it was impossible
now under its uncertain protection to retain white men from the colonies
here in his e