f battle against Colonel Montgomerie, then commanding the
expeditionary forces, he had felt that the tribe's openly inimical
relations with the British government warranted him in coming boldly
forth from his retirement and competing for the honors of the present
campaign of 1761. His friends sought to dissuade him. The government had
had, as assurance of his death, the word of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, who might
yet insist that the pledge be made good. That chief, they urged, had a
delicate conscience, which is often an engine of disastrous efficiency
when exerted on the affairs of other people. Attusah was advised that he
had best stay dead. Although he finally agreed with this, he could not
stay still, and thus as he appeared in various skirmishes it became
gradually bruited abroad among the Cherokees that Attusah, the Northward
Warrior, was a great ada-wehi, a being of magical power, or a ghost as
it might be said, of special spectral distinctions. Thus he lived as
gayly yet as before the dismal day of his execution, always carefully,
however, avoiding the notice of Atta-Kulla-Kulla, whose word had been
solemnly accepted by the British government as the pledge of his death.

It is impossible to understand how a man like Digatiski of Eupharsee
could believe this,--so sage, despite his ignorance, so crafty, so
diplomatic and acute in subterfuge, yet he was sodden in superstition.

"Can you see Colonel Grant, the Barbarous?"[7] he asked suddenly,
lifting his head and gazing steadily at the young Indian's face, which
was outlined against the pallid neutral tint of the sky. The dark
topmost boughs of a balsam fir were just on a level with the clear
high-featured profile; a single star glittering beyond and above his
feathered crest looked as if it were an ornament of the headdress; the
red glow of the smouldering fire within, which had been carefully masked
in ashes as the darkness came on, that its sparkle might not betray
their presence here to any wandering band of troopers, still sufficed to
show the impostor's painted red cheek. He was armed with a tomahawk and
a pistol, without powder as useless as a toy, and a bow borne in default
of aught better lay on the floor beside him, while a gayly ornamented
quiver full of poisoned arrows swung over his shoulder.

"_Ha-tsida-wei-yu!_" he proclaimed. "I am a great ada-wehi! I see him!
Of a surety I see him!"

Attusah gazed at the sombre night with an expression as definitely
per