ed him to accord to any discourse, without
interruption, however unwelcome or trivial it might be esteemed. Then,
smiling slowly, he shook his head.

"You cannot be serious," he said. "It would break old Colannah's heart,
who has been like a father to me."

Abram Varney too had the British bulldog tenacity. "What will you do,
then," he asked slowly and significantly, "when Colannah takes up arms
against the British government? Will you fight men of your own blood?"

He was reinforced in this argument by the habit of thought of the
Indians--the absolute absence of tribal dissensions, of internecine
strife, so marked among the Cherokees: here no man's hand was lifted
against his brother.

Jan Queetlee palpably winced. Come what might, he could never fight for
the Cherokees against the British--his father's people, his mother's
people--no more than he could fight for the British against his adopted
tribe--the Cherokee--and he the "Man-killer!"

"They will fight each other," said Varney weightily, "and the day is not
far--the day is not far!"

For in 1753 the cumulative discontents of the tribe were near the
crisis, earnestly fostered by the French on the western boundaries, that
vast domain then known as Louisiana, toward whose siren voice the
Cherokees had ever lent a willing ear. The building by the British
government, two or three years later, of those great defensive works,
Fort Prince George and Fort Loudon, situated respectively at the eastern
and western extremities of the Cherokee territory, mounted with cannon
and garrisoned by British forces, served to hold them in check and
quieted them for a time, but only for a time. Jan Queetlee, by reason of
his close association with the chiefs, knew far more than Varney dreamed
of the bitterness roused in the hearts of the Indians by friction with
the government, the aggressions of the individual colonist, the
infringements of their privileges in the treaty, and in opposition the
influence of the ever seductive suavity of the French.

As with a sudden hurt, Jan Queetlee cried out with a poignant voice
against the government and its patent unfaith, striking his clinched
fist so heavily on the head of a keg of powder that the stout fibres of
the wood burst beneath the passionate blow, and in a moment he was
covered with the flying particles of the black dust. Realizing the
possibility of an explosion should a candle or a pipe be lighted here,
Varney did not wait for