tened, making, according to an old writer, "very
genteel settees or couches." Tired with the stress of mental depression
and anxiety as physical effort could not tame him, and vaguely prescient
of evil, Otasite had flung himself down on one of these, which was
spread with dressed panther-skins, his hands clasped under his head, his
scalp-lock of two auburn curls dangling over them.

Through the tall narrow doorway the autumnal landscape was visible,
blazing with all the fervors of summer; the mountains, however, were
more softly blue, the sunlight of a richer glister; the river, now
steel, now silver, now amber, reflected the atmosphere as a sensitive
soul reflects the moods of those most dear; the forests, splendid with
color, showed the lavish predominance of the rich reds characteristic of
the Chilhowee woods; a dreamlike haze over all added a vague ideality
that made the scene like some fondest memory or a glamourous forecast.

"_Akoo-e-a!_" (summer yet!) said Colannah, his eyes too on the scene, as
he sat on a buffalo-rug in the centre of the floor drawing in the last
sweet fragrant breaths from his long-stemmed pipe, curiously wrought of
stone, for in the manufacture of these pipes the Cherokees of that day
were said to excel all other Indians. The young Briton experienced no
mawkish pang to note that it was ornamented at one end by a dangling
scalp, greatly treasured, the interior of the skin painted red for its
preservation. He had, in fact, a pipe of his own with a scalp much like
it. Indeed, his trophy was a fine specimen, and it had been a feat to
take it, for it had once covered a hot Chickasaw head.

"_Akoo-e-a!_ the day is warm!" remarked Colannah. He lifted his storied
pipe, and with its long stem silently motioned to a young Indian woman,
indicating a great jar of water. She quickly filled one of those quaint
bowls, or cups, of the Cherokee manufacture, and advanced with it to
Otasite; but the proffer was in the nature of an interruption of his
troubled thoughts, and he irritably waved her away.

"I am displeased with you," said Colannah sternly, lifting his dark,
deeply sunken eyes to where the "Man-killer" lay at full length on the
cane settee. "You set me aside. You have no thoughts for me--no words.
Yet you can talk when you go to the trading-house. You have words and to
spare for the trader. You can drink with him. You can sing, 'Drink with
me a cup of wine.'" He lifted his raucous old voice in lu