the return of one of the brawny packmen to
remove the keg to a cave beneath the trading-house, which he utilized
for storage as a cellar, but addressed himself to the job. Jan Queetlee
silently assisted, his face darker, more lowering with the thought in
his mind than with the smears of the powder.

Varney remembered this afterward, and that he himself, diverted by the
accident from the trend of his argument, had launched out in a tirade
against the government as they worked together, the young Briton's
energy, industry, and persistence so at variance with the aspect of his
tufted topknot of feathers on his auburn curls, and the big blue
warrior's marks on his broad white chest. For Varney too had his
grievances against the powers that were; but his woes were personal. He
vehemently condemned the reconciliation which the government had
effected between the Muscogees and the Cherokees, for although there
were more deerskins to be had for export when the Indian hunters were at
pacific leisure, Varney had considered the recent war between these
tribes an admirable vent for gunpowder and its profitable sale; and
since the savages must always be killing, it was manifestly best for all
concerned that they should kill each other. He could not sufficiently
deride the happy illustration which Governor Glen had given them (in his
fatuity, Varney thought) of the values of peace and concord. In the
presence of the two delegations the mediating Governor had taken an
arrow and shown them with what ease it could be broken; then how
impossible he found it to break a quiverful of arrows, thus
demonstrating the strength in union. Varney argued that the Indians
would readily perceive a further application of the principle and turn
it to account, combining against the colonists. In the same spirit he
animadverted upon a monopoly from which he was excluded in common with
the traders in general, and which had been granted to a mercantile
company seeking to establish posts among the Choctaws. The enterprise,
although favored by the government, obviously because, undertaken on a
scale of phenomenal magnitude, it promised to dislodge the French and
their long-established trade among the Choctaws, and bring that powerful
tribe to a British allegiance, had finally proved a failure; and with a
bitter joy in this fact he alternately contemned and pitied the
government, because it could not wrest this valuable opportunity from
the iron grasp of the