And abruptly said the ada-wehi, as he still lay at length on the floor of the niche,—­

“Skee!” (Listen!)

Naught but the breeze of morning, delicately freighted with the breath of balsams, the dew, the fragrance of the awakening of the wild flowers, the indescribable matutinal freshness, the incense of a new day in June.

“Skee!”

Only the sound of the rippling Tennessee, so silver clear, beating and beating against the vibrant rocks as its currents swirl round the bend at the base of the cliff.

“Skee!”

The sudden fall of a fragment of rock from the face of the crag to the ground far below!—­the interval of time between the scraping dislodgment and the impact with the clay beneath implies a proportional interval of distance.

The conviction is the same in the mind of each.  A living creature is climbing the ascent!  A bear, it may be.  A great bird, an eagle, or one of the hideous mountain vultures, very busy of late, alighting in quest of food—­which it might find in plenty elsewhere, in the track of the invaders.

Attusah does not rely, however, on a facile hypothesis with a triumphant enemy at hand, and a dozen towns charring to ashes in sight.

As noiseless as a shadow, as swift, Attusah is on his feet.  At the back of the great niche, so high that none could conceive that it might afford an exit, a fissure lets in a vague dreary blur of light from spaces beyond.  Leaping high into the air, the lithe young warrior fixes his fingers on the ledge, crumbling at first, but holding firm under a closer grasp.  The elder man, understanding the ruse as if by instinct, lays hold of the knees of the other, held out stiff and straight below.  Then by a mighty effort Attusah lifts the double weight into the fissure, the elder Indian aiding the manoeuvre by walking up the wall, as it were, with his feet successively braced against it.

Outside, now and again bits of rock continued to fall, seeming to herald a cautious approach, for after each sound a considerable interval of silence would ensue.  So long continued was this silence at last that the three women, now alone, began to deem the alarm of an intrusion vain and fantastic.  The elder of them motioned to one of the others to look out and terminate the painful suspense.

The young squaw, brilliant in her scarlet dress and silver tassels, the pappoose piously quiet in his perpendicular cradle on her back, slipped with gingerly caution to the verge of the precipice and looked down.

Nothing she saw, and in turn she was invisible from without.  She wheeled around briskly to reassure the others, and at that moment a young soldier of the battalion of Scotch Highlanders stepped from the horizontal ledge alongside, which he had then gained, and into the niche, bringing up short against the pappoose, stiff and erect in its cradle.

“Hegh, sirs!” he cried in jocular surprise, happy to find naught more formidable, perhaps, although a brave man, for he had volunteered to examine the source of the smoke from this precarious perch,—­which had attracted the attention of the ensign commanding a little detachment,—­despite the fact that a Cherokee in his den and brought to bay was likely to prove a dangerous beast.