"No, Polly Ann," he cried, "there ain't nuthin' happened. We've laid out the hill towns. But the Virginna men wanted a guide, and Tom volunteered, and so he ain't come back with Rutherford's boys." Polly Ann seized him by the shoulders, and looked him in the face. "Be you tellin' the truth, Warner McChesney?" she said in a hard voice. "As God hears me," said Warner McChesney, solemnly. "He sent ye this." He drew from the bosom of his hunting shirt a soiled piece of birch bark, scrawled over with rude writing. Polly seized it, and flew into the house. The hickories turned a flaunting yellow, the oaks a copper-red, the leaves crackled on the Catawba vines, and still Tom McChesney did not come. The Cherokees were homeless and houseless and subdued,--their hill towns burned, their corn destroyed, their squaws and children wanderers. One by one the men of the Grape Vine settlement returned to save what they might of their crops, and plough for the next year--Burrs, O'Haras, Williamsons, and Winns. Yes, Tom had gone to guide the Virginia boys. All had tales to tell of his prowess, and how he had saved Rutherford's men from ambush at the risk of his life. To all of which Polly Ann listened with conscious pride, and replied with sallies. "I reckon I don't care if he never comes back," she would cry. "If he likes the Virginny boys more than me, there be others here I fancy more than him." Whereupon the informant, if he were not bound in matrimony, would begin to make eyes at Polly Ann. Or, if he were bolder, and went at the wooing in the more demonstrative fashion of the backwoods--Polly Ann had a way of hitting him behind the ear with most surprising effect. One windy morning when the leaves were kiting over the valley we were getting ready for pounding hominy, when a figure appeared on the trail. Steadying the hood of her sunbonnet with her hand, the girl gazed long and earnestly, and a lump came into my throat at the thought that the comer might be Tom McChesney. Polly Ann sat down at the block again in disgust. "It's only Chauncey Dike," she said. "Who's Chauncey Dike?" I asked. "He reckons he's a buck," was all that Polly Ann vouchsafed. Chauncey drew near with a strut. He had very long black hair, a new coonskin cap with a long tassel, and a new blue-fringed hunting shirt. What first caught my eye was a couple of withered Indian scalps that hung by their long locks from his girdle. Chauncey Dike was certainly handsome. "Wal, Polly Ann, are ye tired of hanging out fer Tom?" he cried, when a dozen paces away. "I wouldn't be if you was the only one left ter choose," Polly Ann retorted. Chauncey Dike stopped in his tracks and haw-hawed with laughter. But I could see that he was not very much pleased. "Wal," said he, "I 'low ye won't see Tom very soon. He's gone to Kaintuckee." "Has he?" said Polly Ann, with brave indifference.