To be sure the creature spoke French and ate frogs! More heinous still he was always a Romanist, and diatribes on the wicked sorceries and idolatries of papistry had been hurled through MacDonnell’s consciousness from the Presbyterian pulpit since his earliest recollection. But a soldier, a French officer--surely he would be acquainted with higher methods than the barbarities of the savage; he would be instructed in the humanities, subject to those amenities which in all civilized countries protect a prisoner of war. Surely he would not stand by and see a fellow-soldier--a white man, a Christian, like himself--put to the torture and the stake. And if his authority could not avail for protection--“I’d beg a bullet of him; in charity he could not deny me that!” If the opportunity were but vouchsafed, MacDonnell resolved to appeal to the Frenchman by every sanction that can control a gentleman, by their fellow feeling as soldiers, by the bond of their common religion. He hesitated a moment, realizing a certain hiatus here, a gulf--and then he reconciled all things with a triumphant stroke of potent logic. “They may call it idolatry or Mariolatry, if they want to,--but I never heard anybody deny that the Lord _did_ have a mother. And it’s a mighty good thing to have!” This was the thought in his mind--the chance, the hope of surrendering to a French officer. The stir of the Indians recalled him. The moon was lower in the sky, sinking further and further toward that great purple dome of the many summits of the Great Smoky Mountains. All the glistening lines of light upon the landscape--the glossy foliage, the shining river, the shimmering mists--seemed drawn along as if some fine-spun seine, some glittering enmeshment were being hauled into the boat-shaped moon, still rocking and riding the waves off the headlands that the serrated mountains thrust forth like a coast-line on the seas of the sky. Now and again the voices of creatures of prey--wolves, panthers, wildcats--came shrilly snarling through the summer night from the deep interior of the woods, where they wrangled over the gain that the battle had wrought for them in the slain of horses and men,--of the Cherokee force doubtless; MacDonnell had scarcely a fear that these were of Grant’s command, for that officer’s care for such protection of his dead as was possible was always immediate and peculiarly marked, and it was his habit to have the bodies sunk with great weights into the rivers to prevent the scalping of them by the Cherokees. Ronald wearied of the melancholy hours, the long, long night, although light would have but added dangers of discovery. It was the lagging time he would hasten, would fain stride into the future and security, so did the suspense wear on his nerves. It told heavily even on the Indian, and Ronald felt a certain sympathy when Choolah’s half-suppressed voice greeted the scout, creeping into the grotto once more, with the wistful