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Therefore, averse as they were to subscribe to the modern methods which had wrought them such woe and humiliation and defeat, the dominant superstition of the race now fell far short of the fantasy of liberating a British prisoner at this crisis under the influence of any spectral manifestation whatsoever. The council was obviously steeled against this proposition, as MacVintie shortly perceived, and equally determined that the ada-wehi must needs exert phenomenal and magical powers indeed to avoid yet making good the nation’s pledge of his death to the British government, and becoming a ghost in serious earnest. MacVintie’s heart sank within him as he noted the hardening of the lines of their grave harsh faces and the affirmative nodding of the feather-crested heads, conferring together, as the decision was reached.

It accorded, however, with their ancient custom to postpone over a night the execution of any sentence of special weight, and therefore the council adjourned to the next day, the two prisoners being left in the deserted building, each securely bound with a rope to a pillar of the series which upheld the roof of the strange circular edifice. This colonnade stood about four feet from the wall, and the interval between was occupied by a divan, fashioned of dexterously woven cane, extending around the room; and as the prisoners could seat themselves here, or lie at full length, they were subjected to no greater hardship than was consistent with their safe custody.

A sentinel with his musket on his shoulder stood at the door, and the sun was going down. Kenneth MacVintie could see through the open portal the red glow in the waters of the Tennessee River. Now and then a flake of a glittering white density glided through it, which his eyes, accustomed to long distances, discriminated as a swan. Thunder-heads, however, were gathering above the eastern slopes and the mountains were a lowering slate-toned purple, save when a sudden flash of lightning roused them to a vivid show of green.

The dull red hue of the interior of the council-house darkened gradually; the embers of the council-fire faded into the gray ash, and the night came sullen and threatening before its time.

The young Highlander sought to bend his mind to the realization that his days on earth were well-nigh ended, and that it behooved him to think on the morrow elsewhere. He had an old-fashioned religious faith presumed to be fitted for any emergency, but in seeking to recall its dogmas and find such consolation in its theories as might sustain a martyr at the stake, he was continually distracted with the momentous present.

The two prisoners could no longer see each other, and the little gestures and significant glances which had supplemented their few words, and made up for the lack of better conversational facilities were impracticable in the darkness.

The silent obscurity was strangely lonely. MacVintie began to doubt if the other still lived.

“Attusah!” he said at length.

“Tsida-wei-yu!” (I am a great ada-wehi) murmured the ghost mechanically.

He was quite spent, exhausted by the effort to logically exist as a ghost in a world which had repudiated him as a live man.

MacVintie, who found it hard enough to reconcile himself to die once, felt a poignant sympathy for him, who must needs die again. But the Highlander could not think. He could not even pray. He desisted from the fitful effort after a time. He had a depressing realization that a good soldier relies upon the proficiency acquired by the daily drill to serve in an emergency, not a special effort at smartness for an occasion. The battle or the review would show the quality of the stuff that was in him.

Despite the stunned despair which possessed his mental faculties, his physical senses were keenly acute. He marked unconsciously the details of the rising of the wind bringing the storm hitherward. A searching flash of lightning showed the figure of the sentinel, half crouching before the blast, at his post in the open portal. The rain was presently falling heavily, and ever and anon a great suffusion of yellow glare in its midst revealed the myriads of slanting lines as it came. He inhaled the freshened fragrance it brought from the forests. He noted the repeated crash of the thunder, the far-away rote of the echoes, the rhythmic beat of the torrents on the ground, and their tumultuous swift dash down the slope of the dome-shaped roof, and suddenly among these turmoils,–he could hardly believe his ears,–a mild little whimper of protest.