He had a momentary shame in thus giving way to his surcharged feelings, but as he rose mechanically from his chair his restless eyes, glancing excitedly about the room, surprised an expression of sympathy in the face of the Cherokee as he lay coiled up on the rug. "Atta-Kulla-Kulla!" Stuart exclaimed impulsively, holding out both arms, "feel for me! Think of me! The poor remnant of the garrison! My 'young men'! My own command! I will die first, myself, a thousand deaths!" Atta-Kulla-Kulla began to argue, speaking partly in Cherokee and now and again in fragmentary English. Neither the one nor the other might be the victim. The commandant at Fort Prince George would yield under this strong coercion. "Never! Never!" cried Stuart. "His duty is to hold the fort. He will defend it to the last man and the last round of ammunition and the last issuance of rations. For his countrymen to be tortured and burned in his sight and hearing would doubtless give him great pain. But his duty is to his own command, and he will do it." Atta-Kulla-Kulla seemed doubtful. "And then," argued Stuart, "would such torturing and burning of the surrendered garrison of Fort Loudon before the eyes of the garrison of Fort Prince George be an inducement to them to surrender too, and perhaps meet the same fate? Be sure they will sell their lives more dearly! Be sure they will have heard of the massacre of the soldiers under the Cherokees' pledge of safe-conduct on the plains of Taliquo." "_To-e-u-hah!_" Atta-Kulla-Kulla broke out furiously. "_To-e-u-hah!_ It is most true!" His countenance had changed to extreme anger. He launched out into a bitter protest that he had always contemned, and deprecated, and sought to prevent this continual violation of their plighted word and the obligations of their treaties on the part of the Cherokee nation. It invariably hampered their efforts afterward, as it was hampering them now. It took from their hand the tool of negotiation, the weapon of the head-men, and left only the tomahawk, the brute force of the tribe. _Wahkane, wahkane!_ Was it not so when the treaty of Lyttleton was broken and Montgomery, the Terrible, came in his stead? And when the Cherokees had driven him out, and had taken their revenge on him for the blood which had been shed in his first foray, of what avail to massacre the garrison evacuating Fort Loudon, the possession of which had been for so long a coveted boon, and thus preclude a peaceful rendering of Fort Prince George and the expulsion of all English soldiery from Cherokee soil!