The scout was true to his vagrant tendencies, or perhaps because of those tendencies he felt himself safer in the dense, impenetrable jungle, crawling along flat like a lizard or a snake, than seated perched up here on a bluff by a flaring camp-fire with only two other men, a mark for “Brown Bess”--the Cherokees were all armed with British muskets, although they were in revolt, and perhaps it was one reason why they were in revolt--for many a yard up and down the Tennessee River. “I go see,” he suggested. “No, no,” said MacDonnell, “only a bear.” “I come back soon,” declared the _Etissu_, half crouching and gazing about, “soon, soon. _Alooska, Ko-e-u-que-ho._” (I do not lie, I do not indeed.) MacDonnell lifted his head and gazed about with a frowning mien of reluctance “_Maia cha!_” (Go along) he said at last. Then called out, “Come back _soon_,” as his attention returned to the priming and loading of a pistol which he had in progress. “Soon! remember!” The scout was off like a rabbit. For a moment or two MacDonnell did not lift his eyes, while they heard him crashing through the thicket. Then as he looked up he met the dull despair in the face of the bound and helpless Frenchman. It mattered little to him who came, who went. He gasped suddenly in amazement. The Highland officer was gazing at him with a genial, boyish smile, reassuring, almost tender. “Run, now, run for your life!” he said, leaning forward, and with a pass or two of a knife he severed the prisoner’s bonds. In the revulsion of feeling the man seemed scarcely able to rise to his feet. There were tears in his eyes; his face quivered as he looked at his deliverer. “Danger--big fire--burn,” said the astute MacDonnell, as if the English words thus detached were more comprehensible to the French limitations. Perhaps his gestures aided their effect, and as he held out his hand in his whole-souled, genial way, the Frenchman grasped it in a hard grip of fervent gratitude and started off swiftly. The next moment the young officer turned back, caught the British soldier in his arms, and to MacDonnell’s everlasting consternation kissed him in the foreign fashion, first on one cheek and then on the other. Ronald MacDonnell’s mess often preyed upon the disclosures which his open, ingenuous nature afforded them. But his simplicity stopped far short of revealing to them this Gallic demonstration of gratitude--so exquisitely ludicrous it seemed to his unemotional methods and mind. They were debarred the pleasure of racking him on this circumstance. They never knew it. He disclosed it only years afterward, and then by accident, to a member of his own family.