felt his heart leap into his throat, then sink like lead;
Colannah, triumphant, knowing naught of the subtler significance of the
contest, joyful, aglow with pride, rose up in his splendid feathered
mantle, standing high on the slope, to sign to the boy his pleasure in
the victory. The sunlight fell, glittering very white, on the young
fellow's doeskin garb, his prickly belt of fangs, his bare chest with
the blue warrior's marks, the curls of his auburn scalp-lock tossing in
the wind. He had seemed hitherto stoical, unmoved by victory as he would
have appeared in defeat; but Varney, eager to get at him, to combat his
resolution, knew that he was stunned by the complications presented by
this falling out of the event. He visibly faltered as his eye met the
triumph and affection expressed in Colannah's quivering old face. He
could not respond to its congratulation. He dropped on one knee
suddenly, bending low, affecting to find something amiss with one of his
moccasins.

Wyejah, too, could seem unmoved by victory, but indifference to defeat
was more difficult to simulate. He had in the first moment of its
realization felt the blood rush to his head; despite his strong nerve
his hand trembled; the smile of placidity which it was a point of honor
to preserve became a fixed grin. Several other young braves had come
into the yard, and were idly tossing the lance at the great
chungke-pole--as a billiardist of the civilized life of that day might
pocket the balls with a purposeless cue after a match. Wyejah, too, had
cast his lance aslant; then he idly hurled the chungke-stone with a
muscular fling along the spaces of the white sand. His nerve was shaken,
his aim amiss, his great strength deflected. The heavy discoidal quartz
stone skimmed through the air above the stretch of sand, and striking
with its beveled edge the kneeling figure on the temple, the future of
the victor at chungke became in one moment the past.

The trader could only have likened the scene that ensued to the moment
of an earthquake or some other stupendous convulsion of nature. In the
midst of the confusion, the wild cries, the swift running figures, the
surging of the crowds into the chungke-yard that obliterated the wide
glare of the sun on the white sand, he made good his escape. He knew
enough of the trend of Cherokee thought to be prescient of the fate of
the scapegoat. Colannah in the first burst of grief he knew would blame
himself that he should h