As Varney, half crouching on the ground, noted the latter in the dusk, he cried out precipitately, “Robbed you of what?  My God! let us go upstairs.  I’ll give it back, whatever it is, twice over, fourfold!  Don’t swing the candle around that way, Colannah! the powder will blow us and the whole trading-house into the Tennessee River.”

Colannah nodded acquiescence, the stately feathers on his head gleaming fitfully in the clare-obscure of the cavern.  “That is why I came!  Then the British government could demand no satisfaction for the life of the British subject—­an accident—­the old chief of Tennessee Town killed with him.  And I should be avenged.”

“For what?  My God!” Varney had not before called upon the Lord for twenty years.  To hold a diplomatic conversation with an enraged wild Indian, flourishing a lighted candle in a powder magazine, is calculated to bring even the most self-sufficient and forgetful sinner to a sense of his dependence and helplessness.  The lighted candle was a more subjugating weapon than a drawn sword.  He had contemplated springing upon the stanch old warrior, although, despite the difference in age, he was no match for the Indian, in order to seek to extinguish it.  He reflected, however, that in the struggle a flaring spark might cause the ignition of scattered particles of the powder about the floor, and thus precipitate the explosion which he shuddered to imagine.  “For what, Colannah?” he asked again, in a soothing smooth cadence, “for what, my comrade, my benefactor for years, my best-beloved friend—­avenged on me for what?  Let’s go upstairs!”

The flicker of the wavering candle showed a smile of contempt on the face of the angry Indian for a moment, and admonished Varney that in view of the Cherokees’ relish of the torture his manifestations of anxiety but prolonged his jeopardy.  It brought, too, a fuller realization of the gravity of the situation in that the Indian should so valiantly risk himself.  He evidently intended to take the trader’s life, but in such wise that no vengeance for his death should fall upon the Cherokee nation.  Abram Varney summoned all his courage, which was not inconsiderable, and had been cultivated by the wild and uncertain conditions of his life.  Assured that he could do naught to hasten his release, he awaited the event in a sort of stoical patience, dreading, however, every motion, every sound, the least stir setting his expectant nerves aquiver.  Silence, quiescence, brought the disclosure earlier than he had feared.

“When I took the boy Jan Queetlee—­why do I call him thus, instead of by the name he has earned for himself, the noble Otasite of Tennessee Town?”—­the old chief began as deliberately, as disregardfully of the surroundings as if seated under the boughs of one of the giant oaks on the safe slopes of Chilhowee yonder—­“when I took him away from the braves who had overcome the South Carolina stationers, I owed him no duty.