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“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 ludicrous travesty of the favorite catch, for sometimes the two Britons, so incongruous in point of age, education, sentiment, and occupation, cemented their bond as compatriots by carousing together in a mild way.

But this ebullition of temper had naught of the ludicrous in Jan Queetlee’s estimation. He was pierced to the heart.

“Aketohta!” (Father!) he cried reproachfully. He had sprung to his feet, and stood looking down at the old chief, who would not look at him, but kept his eyes on the landscape without, now and then drawing a long, lingering whiff from his pipe.

“Aketohta! I have no thought for you!–who alone have taken thought for me! I have words for the trader and silence for you! You say keen things, and you know they are not true! You know that I had rather drink water with you than wine with him. I am not thirsty; but since it is you who offer it”–His expression changed; he broke into sudden pleasant laughter, and with a rollicking stave of the song, “Drink with me a cup of wine,” he caught the bowl from the girl’s hand and drained it at a draught.

“Seohsta-quo!” (Good!) cried Colannah, visibly refreshed, as if his own thirst were vicariously slaked. But Otasite stood blankly staring, the bowl motionless in his hand. “It is well for wine to be old,” he said wonderingly, “but not water.”

For his palate was accustomed to the exquisite sparkle and freshness of the mountain fountains, and this had come from far.

The crafty Colannah stolidly repressed his delight, save for the glitter in his eyes fixed on the azure and crimson and silver landscape glimmering beyond the dusky portals of the terra-cotta walls. “Nawohti! nawohti!” (Rum!) he said, with an affectation of severity. “You drink too much of the trader’s strong physic! You have no love now for the sweet, clear water.” And he shook his head with the uncompromising reproof of a mentor of present times as he growled disjointedly, “Nawohti! nawohti!”

Otasite nothing questioned the genuineness of this demonstration, for the Cherokee rulers, in common with those of other tribes, had long waged a vigorous opposition to the importation of strong drink into their country; indeed, as far back as 1704, when holding a solemn conference with Governor Daniel of North Carolina to form a general treaty of friendship, the chiefs of several tribes petitioned the government of the Lords Proprietors for a law, which was afterward enacted (and disregarded), forbidding any white man to sell or give rum to an Indian, and prescribing penalties for its infringement. It was not the first time that Otasite had heard unfavorably of the influences of “nawohti,” which, by the way, with the Cherokees signified physic, as well as spirituous liquor, a synonymous definition which more civilized people have sought to apply. He was content that he and the old chief were once more in affectionate accord, and he did not seek to interpret the flash of triumph in Colannah’s face.

For seven years! for seven years! the white “Man-killer” could not, if he would, quit the Cherokee country. Well might the old chief’s eyes glisten! The youth was like a son to his lonely age, and Otasite’s prowess the pride of his life. And like others elsewhere he had softened as age came on, and loved the domestic fireside and the companionship about the hearth, hearing without participating in the hilarious talk of the young, and looking out at the world through the eyes of the new generation, undaunted, expectant, aglow with a spirit that had long ago smouldered in his own; for the fierce Indian at the last was but an old man.