They were hardly out of sight when MacDonnell, kicking the enveloping blanket out of the way, sat down on one of the logs by the fire and spread his big bony hands out to the blaze. It was growing chill; the June night was wearing on toward the dawn; it was that hour of reduced vitality when hope seems of least value, and the blood runs low, and conscience grows keen, and the future and the past bear heavily alike on the present. The prisoner was shivering slightly. He glanced expectantly at the Scotchman’s impassive countenance. No man knew better than Ronald MacDonnell the churlishness of a lack of consideration of the comfort of others in small matters. No man could offer little attentions more genially. They comported essentially with his evident breeding, and his rank in the army; once more the prisoner looked expectantly at him, and then, wounded, like a Frenchman, as for a host’s lack of consideration, he sat down on a log uninvited, casting but one absent glance, from which curiosity seemed expunged, at the effigies which explained how the Cherokees came to their fate. It mattered little now, his emotional, sensitive face said. Naught mattered! Naught! Naught! In the sudden nervous shock his vitality was at its lowest ebb. He could not spread his hands to the blaze, for his arms had been pinioned cruelly tight. He shivered again, for the fire was low. MacDonnell noticed it, but he did not stir; perhaps he thought Johnny Crapaud would soon find the fire hot enough. The scout himself mended it, as he sat tailorwise on the ground between the other two men. Now and again the _Etissu_ gazed at MacDonnell’s impassive, rather lowering countenance, with a certain awe; if he had expected the officer to show the squeamishness which Colonel Grant developed in such matters, or any pity, he was mistaken; then he looked with curiosity at the Frenchman. The prisoner’s lips were vaguely moving, and Ronald MacDonnell caught a suggestion of the sound--half-whispered words, not French, or he would not have understood; Latin!--paters and aves! As he had expected--frogs, papistry, French, and fool! “What’s that?” the Highland officer said, so suddenly that the scout started in affright. “Nothing,” said the Indian; “the wind, perhaps.” “Sticks cracking in the laurel--a bear, perhaps,” suggested MacDonnell, taking up a loaded musket and laying it across his knee. Then “Only a bear,” he repeated reassuringly. “Choolah ought to leave more men here,” said the _Etissu_. “It’s nothing!” declared MacDonnell, rising and looking warily about. “Perhaps Choolah on his way back.”