Why the menace was not repeated, whether the skulking braves feared the displeasure of their own authorities, or the coolness of the little group extorted their admiration, so quick to respond to an exhibition of stoical courage, no further demonstration was offered, and the boat was pulled down the five miles from Choté to Fort Loudon in better time perhaps than was ever made with the same weight on that river. The landing was reached, to the relief even of the phlegmatic-seeming Stuart. "So ends so much," he said, as he stepped out of the boat. "And I go to Choté--old town--no more." But he was destined one day to retrace his way, and, sooth to say, with a heavier heart. The season waxed to ripeness. The opulent beauty of the early summer-tide was on this charmed land. Along the heavily-wooded mountain sides the prodigal profusion of the blooming rhododendron glowed with a splendor in these savage solitudes which might discredit the treasures of all the royal gardens of Europe. Vast lengths of cabling grape-vines hung now and again from the summit of one gigantic tree to the ground, and thence climbed upward a hundred feet to the topmost boughs of another, affording ambush for Indians, and these darkling coverts began to be craftily eyed by the soldiers, whose daily hunt for the provisions of the post carried them through many dense jungles. Everywhere the exquisite mountain azalea was abloom, its delicate, subtle fragrance pervading the air as the appreciation of some noble virtue penetrates and possesses the soul, so intimate, so indissoluble, so potent of cognition. It seemed the essential element of the atmosphere one breathed. And this atmosphere--how light--how pure! sheer existence was a cherished privilege. And always on this fine ethereal medium came the echo of woe; blended with the incense of the blooming wild grape seemed the smell of blood; the rare variety of flame-tinted azaleas flaring on some high, secluded slope showed a color reminiscent only of the burning roof-trees and stockades of destroyed homes. Peace upon the august mountains to the east, veiling their peaks and domes in stillness and with diaphanous cloud; peace upon the flashing rivers, infinitely clear and deep in their cliff-bound channels; and peace upon all the heavily-leaved shadowy forests to the massive westward range, level of summit, stern and military of aspect, like some gigantic rampart! But the mind was continually preëmpted by the knowledge that in the south were murder and despair, in the east were massacre and pillage, that rapine was loosed upon the land, and that this external fixity of calm was as unstable as the crystalline sphere of a bubble to collapse at a touch. Every ear was strained to a whisper; the express from over the mountain was met afar off by stragglers from the settlement, and came, delivering by word of mouth such news as he personally possessed, before his package was rendered up to the officers at the fort. Every heart