ugh, seemed to
the trembling trader illimitable, he recommenced abruptly: "Says the
Goweno long time ago to me, 'Is not there a white youth among you?' I
say, 'He is content; he has no white friends, it seems.' Says the Goweno
to me, 'Ah, ah, we must look into this!' and says no more."

Colannah flung back his head and laughed so long and so loud that every
echo of the sarcastic guttural tones, striking back from the stone walls
of the cavern, smote Varney with as definite a shock as a blow.

"And now," the Cherokee resumed, with a changed aspect and a pathetic
cadence, "I am an old man, and I lean upon Otasite. My sons are all
dead--one in the wars with the Muscogee and two slain by the Chickasaw.
And the last he said to me, with his lingering latest breath, loath to
go and leave me desolate, 'But you have an adopted son, you have the
noble Otasite.' And now," his voice was firm again, "if I have him not,
I go too, and you go. We go together."

"I will not advise him to quit the nation--never again!" cried Varney,
suddenly enlightened, fervently repudiating his interference. "Since you
disapprove, he shall not return to Carolina. He _cannot_ go without
me--my help; he could not find a place--a home. Bold and fine as he is
here, he would be strange there; he knows naught of the ways of the
colonists. He would be poor, despised, while here he has been like the
first, the best. His pride could never stoop to a life like a slave's;
his pride would break his heart. Let me undo the mischief I have
wrought; let me unsay the unthinking, foolish words I have spoken."

It was perhaps with the faith that the artful trader could best turn the
young fellow's mind back to its wonted content, as his crafty arguments
had already so potently aroused this wild, new dissatisfaction, that
Colannah at last consented to liberate Varney for this essay, not
without a cogent reminder that he would be held responsible for its
failure. And indeed in recanting his former urgency, when he sought out
Otasite, Varney exerted himself to the utmost.

"You are satisfied here. You know the life. Like me, you love it. If I,
who can choose, prefer it, why not you?"

But Otasite shook his head.

"When I talk to you of the colonies I speak as a man does of a dream,"
Varney continued. "It is something true and something false. I add here
and I let slip there to make out the connection, and give the symmetry
of truth to the picture. But did I ever tell