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The exploration of L’Epine and O’Kimmon of necessity was conducted chiefly by day, but one night the prospectors could not be still, the moon on the sand was so bright!

The time which they had fixed for a silent, secret departure was drawing near. Their bags were almost filled, but they lingered for a little more, and covetously a little more still. And this night, this memorable night, the moon on the sand was as bright as day!

The light slanted across the Tennessee River and shimmered in the ripples. One could see, if one would, the stately lines of dark summits along a far horizon. A mockingbird was singing from out the boscage of the laurel near at hand, and the night wind was astir. And suddenly the two gold-washers in the depths of the grotto became conscious that they were not alone.

There, sitting like stone figures one on each side of the narrow portal, were the two cheera-taghe of the town, silent, motionless, watching with eyes how long alert, listening with ears how discerningly attentive, it is impossible to divine.

The gold-washers sprang to their feet, each instinctively grasping for his weapon, but alack, neither was armed! The pan had come to seem the most potent of accoutrements, with which, in good sooth, one might take the world by storm, and the rifle and knife were forgotten, in their absorption. Doubtless the Cherokees interpreted aright the gesture, so significant, so obvious to their methods of life. Both the cheera-taghe were armed with pistol as well as tomahawk and scalping-knife.

Perhaps because of this they felt secure, at leisure, acquiescently allowing the event to develop as it needs must,–or perhaps realizing the significance of the discovery to the young strangers, their palpitant eagerness to gauge its result, their dread of reprisal, of forced renunciation of their booty, the Indians permitted themselves a relish of the torture of an enemy on a more aesthetic scheme than their wont.

The two cheera-taghe, the shadow of their feather-crested heads in the moonlight on the sand of the grotto almost as distinct as the reality, spoke suddenly to each other, and the discomfited gold-seekers, who had learned to comprehend to a certain extent the language, perceived with dismay the sarcasm that lengthened their suspense. For it was thus that the rulers among the Cherokees rebuked their own young people, not upbraiding them with their misdeeds, but with gentle satire complimenting them for that in which they had notably failed.

“A reward for hospitality we find in these young men,” said one, whose voice was hoarse and croaking and guttural and who was called Kanoona (the Bull-frog).

“Strangers to us, yet they requite us, for we treated them as our own,” said Oo-koo-koo.

“They treat us as their own!” the croaking, satiric, half-smothered laughter of this response intimated an aside. Then Kanoona in full voice went on, “Open and frank as the day, they keep no secrets from us!”

“They are honest! They rob us not of the yellow stone which the Carolina people think so precious!” rejoined Oo-koo-koo, while O’Kimmon and L’Epine looked from one to the other as the cheera-taghe sustained this fugue of satiric accusation.

“Not they,” croaked the responsive voice, “for behold, we have long time fed and lodged them and given them of our best. We have believed them and trusted them. We have befriended them and loved them.”

“And they have befriended and loved us!” said Oo-koo-koo.

Then silence. The river sang, but only a murmurous rune; the mute moonlight lay still on the mountains; the wind had sunk, and the motionless leaves glistened as the dew fell; a nighthawk swept past the portal of the grotto with the noiseless wing of its kind.

“Had they desired to explore our land they would have asked our consent,” the croaking voice of Kanoona resumed the antiphonal reproach. “They would not have brought upon us the hordes of British colonists, who would fain drive us from our habitations for their greed of the yellow stone.”