" exclaimed the Highlander.
"I hae seen the Little Carpenter in the harbor in Charlestoun, swingin'
an' bobbin' at her cables, just out frae the mither country! Her
captain's name wull be Maitland."

This evidence of the importance of the Cherokee magnate in the opinion
of the British colonists did not please the ada-wehi. He spat upon the
ship with ostentatious contempt as it were, and then went on silently
with his carving.

The mockingbird paused to listen to a note from the hermit thrush in the
dense rhododendron, still splendidly abloom on the mountain slope. The
Scotchman's eyes narrowed to distinguish if the white flake of light in
the deep green water across a little bay were the reflection of the
flower known as the Chilhowee lily, or the ethereal blossom itself.

Attusah's mind seemed yet with the seagoing craft. He himself knew the
name of another ship, he said presently; and the Highlander fancied that
he ill liked to be outdone in knowledge of the outer world.

But it was immediately developed that in this ship Atta-Kulla-Kulla had
sailed to England many years before to visit King George II. in
London.[8] Attusah could not at once anglicize the name "Chochoola," but
after so long a time MacVintie was enabled to identify the Fox, then a
noted British man-of-war.

In these leisurely beguilements the days passed, until one morning
Attusah's fears and presentiments were realized in their seizure by a
party of Cherokees, who swooped down upon their hermitage and bore them
off by force to the council-house of the town of Citico, where
Atta-Kulla-Kulla and a number of other head men had assembled to discuss
the critical affairs of the tribe, and decide on its future policy.

So critical indeed was the situation that it seemed to MacVintie that
they might well dispense with notice of two factors so inconsiderable in
the scale of national importance as the ada-wehi and his captive. But
one was a British prisoner, calculated to expiate in a degree with his
life the woe and ruin his comrades had wrought. The more essential was
this course since the triumph of putting him to the torture and death
would gratify and reanimate many whose zeal was flagging under an
accumulation of anguish and helpless defeat, and stimulate them to
renewed exertions. For before the Cherokees would sue for peace they
waited long in the hope that the French would yet be enabled to convey
to them a sufficient supply of powder to renew an