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“Mattapewiwak nik, schwannakwak!” (The white people are a deceiving lot!) said Tscholens, seeking some common ground on which they could meet with a mutual sentiment.

And at once Tsiskwa was all animation and as aggressive as at twenty. Well, indeed, might the Lenape say that! They were forever an easy prey–not only of the astute Europeans, but of the simple Indian as well. For a hundred years they had been the dupe of the Mengwe! As the mind of Tsiskwa dwelt on the various subtleties of the diplomatic attitude of the Mengwe toward the Lenape, its craft so appealed to him that his lips curved with relish; a smile irradiated his blurred eyes and intensified his wrinkles; his cough, shaking the folds of his outer fur garments above his wasted chest, mingled with his gay chuckle of merriment, as young as a boy’s, while he cried, “Iroquois! Iroquois!”–the characteristic exclamation of the Mengwe confederation, whence they take their modern and popular name, and signifying, “I have spoken! I have spoken!”

At the familiar and detested sound the Lenape suddenly smote his breast with his braceleted arms, and a strong cry involuntarily broke from him–so poignant, so bitter, so shrill, that it sounded high above the bleating flute, the guttural drone of the drum, the vibratory throb of the dancing feet, and brought the pastime to a sudden close. In another moment the “beloved square” was filled with crowds of the Cherokees and their huddling shadows, all a medley in the last red suffusions of the sinking sun. To the tumult of eager, anxious, polite questions, Tscholens faltered to Savanukah, who had hastily returned:–

“N’schauwihilla! N’dagotschi! Lowanneunk undchen!” (I am fainting! I am cold! The wind comes from the north!)

He looked ill enough, but Savanukah’s sharp eyes scanned suspiciously the aged countenance of Tsiskwa of Citico. Tsiskwa was, however, the image of venerable and respected innocence. His aged lips mumbled one upon the other silently. He hardly seemed to take note of the tumult. When the afflicted “grandfather” was being led away from the scene, Savanukah loitered to ask, with well-couched phrase and the show of deep reverence, what had been the tenor of the discourse, and it was with a galvanic jerk that the old man appeared to gather his faculties together.

“Of what did he talk?” Tsiskwa fixed august eyes upon Savanukah as he repeated the query. “Am I to remember of what young men talk?–the mad young men?–mad, mad–all quite mad!”

For not to Savanukah, surely, would he confess; and although because of this reticence that discerning party believed that Tsiskwa had wittingly wounded their emotional “grandfather” in his tenderest pride till he roared like a bull, Savanukah afterward had cause to repudiate this opinion in a conviction which was less to the credit of the acumen of Tsiskwa than a full confession of his breach of etiquette in tormenting his young “grandfather” might have been. At the time Savanukah felt a certain, malicious pride in the old man’s keenness and poise and capacity, and he said apart to the inquisitive bystanders that, as might have been expected, the big bird, Tsiskwa-yah, had pounced upon the little bird, Tscholen-tit–for the name of each signifies a bird in their respective languages, and the suffixes imply great and small. And mightily pleased was Savanukah with his own wit.

That night came a sudden change. A keen frost was falling soon after the sun went down, for the wind was laid, and such a chill glittering white moon came gliding out of the mists about the dark Great Smoky domes that it seemed the winter incarnate. All adown the desert aisles of the leafless woods the light lay with a flocculent glister like snow, so enhanced was its whiteness in the rare air and the blackness of the forest shadows–spare, clearly drawn, all filar and fine like the intricacies of a delicate line engraving. Something that the daylight might have shown, blue and blurred, was about the mountains; it followed the progress of that wintry moon westward. Presently, drawn up from across the ranges, it proved to be a purple cloud, and despite the broad section of the heavens still clear and the glittering whorls of the constellations, that cloud held snow.