now and again bits of rock continued to fall, seeming to herald
a cautious approach, for after each sound a considerable interval of
silence would ensue. So long continued was this silence at last that the
three women, now alone, began to deem the alarm of an intrusion vain and
fantastic. The elder of them motioned to one of the others to look out
and terminate the painful suspense.

The young squaw, brilliant in her scarlet dress and silver tassels, the
pappoose piously quiet in his perpendicular cradle on her back, slipped
with gingerly caution to the verge of the precipice and looked down.

Nothing she saw, and in turn she was invisible from without. She wheeled
around briskly to reassure the others, and at that moment a young
soldier of the battalion of Scotch Highlanders stepped from the
horizontal ledge alongside, which he had then gained, and into the
niche, bringing up short against the pappoose, stiff and erect in its
cradle.

"Hegh, sirs!" he cried in jocular surprise, happy to find naught more
formidable, perhaps, although a brave man, for he had volunteered to
examine the source of the smoke from this precarious perch,--which had
attracted the attention of the ensign commanding a little
detachment,--despite the fact that a Cherokee in his den and brought to
bay was likely to prove a dangerous beast.

The Highlander had a piece of bread in his hand, from which he had been
recklessly munching as he had stood for a moment's breathing spell on
the horizontal ledge beside the niche before venturing to enter, for the
command had broken camp with scant allowance of time for breakfast. With
a genial laugh he thrust a morsel into the pappoose's open mouth and put
the rest in its little fingers.

Perhaps it was because of his relief to find no bigger Cherokee man
stowed away here in ambush; perhaps because he was himself hearty and
well-fed and disposed to be gracious; perhaps because he had a
whole-souled gentle nature hardly consonant with the cruel arts of war
which he practiced,--at all events he was thoughtful enough of others to
mark the ravenous look which the women cast upon the food in the child's
hand.

"Gude guide us!" he exclaimed. "This is fearfu' wark! The hellicat
hempies are half starved!"

For if Colonel Grant compassionated the plight of the savages, as he has
recorded, and shrank from the ruin wrought in the discharge of his duty
of destroying their capacities for resistance and the mainten