“Akoo-e-a!” (summer yet!) said Colannah, his eyes too on the scene, as he sat on a buffalo-rug in the centre of the floor drawing in the last sweet fragrant breaths from his long-stemmed pipe, curiously wrought of stone, for in the manufacture of these pipes the Cherokees of that day were said to excel all other Indians.  The young Briton experienced no mawkish pang to note that it was ornamented at one end by a dangling scalp, greatly treasured, the interior of the skin painted red for its preservation.  He had, in fact, a pipe of his own with a scalp much like it.  Indeed, his trophy was a fine specimen, and it had been a feat to take it, for it had once covered a hot Chickasaw head.

“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.