Not again did either of the chiefs speak. Demeré flushed with anger as sentence after sentence rang out in English, now from Stuart's lips, now from his own,--cogent, persuasive, flattering, fruitless; repeated by the interpreter in Cherokee, and followed by a blank pause. Finally Demeré rose, and with a curt phrase of formal farewell, to which neither of the chiefs responded, bowed angrily, and walked out, pausing near the entrance to wait for Stuart, who with blandest ceremony was taking his leave,--saying how much he hoped there would be no interruption to the kind friendship with which the great men had personally favored them, and which they so highly valued; and how earnestly he desired to express their thanks for the interview, although it grieved him to perceive that the chiefs felt they could say so little on the subject that had brought him hither. He could not have bowed with more respectful formality if he were quitting the presence of General Amherst himself, the cocked hat in his right hand sweeping low as he made his obeisance; but he could detect in both faces no change of expression, except that the eye of Oconostota twinkled with derision or anger or pleasure--who can say? He left them sitting motionless there in the deep red dusk reflected down from the terra-cotta walls, and the interpreter, looking as wooden as his voice sounded, standing bolt upright behind them. Stuart did not comment on the character of the audience vouchsafed as, shoulder to shoulder, he and Demeré took their way down to the boat, where the young soldier awaited them. He only said, "I have been uneasy about that orderly all the time for fear our presence here did not protect him, as he was not on the ever-sacred soil of the 'beloved city of refuge'--Choté--old town. I wished we had taken the precaution of ordering him ashore. Affairs are near the crisis, Paul." They seated themselves, and the young soldier pulled out from the shore, Demeré, both angry and cast down, realizing as he had not heretofore the imminence of the peril to the settlement. Dusk was upon the river; stars began to palpitate elusively in the pallid sky; shadows mustered thick along the bank. Suddenly a sound, sharp, discordant, split the air, and a rifle-ball whizzed past between the two officers and struck the water on the further side of the boat. The unarmed orderly seemed for a moment as if he would plunge into the river. "Steady--steady--give way," said Stuart. Then to Demeré, who had his hand on his pistol, and was casting a keen glance along the shore preparatory to taking aim,--"Why do you return the fire, Paul? To make our fate certain? We should be riddled in a moment. I have counted nearly fifty red rascals in those laurel bushes."