She rose to her feet so precipitately that with the shifting of her weight the canoe careened suddenly and was momentarily in danger of capsizing with all on board. Willinawaugh glanced up with a kindling eye and a ferocious growl. Hamish, throwing himself skillfully on the opposite side, adroitly trimmed the boat. His look of warning, upbraiding and yet sympathizing, steadied Odalie's nerves as she sank back into her place. She tactfully made it appear that she had accidentally come near to dropping the little girl from her grasp and rising to recover her had shaken the poise of the frail craft. Willinawaugh's mutter of dissatisfaction showed that he esteemed the possibility no very great mischance, and set no high store on Josephine. Now and again he eyed the cat, too, malevolently, as if he could ill brook her mannerisms and pampered mien. Hamish had an uncomfortable idea that the Cherokee was not familiar with animals of this kind, and that he harbored a wonder if Kitty would not serve her best and noblest possibilities in a savory stew. But for himself Hamish avoided the Indian's eyes with their curious painted circles of black and white, as much as he might, for whenever their glances met, Willinawaugh's facial contortion to deride the "fonny" disposition he deemed a part of Hamish's supposed French nature so daunted the boy that he bent his head as well as his muscles to the work. That day was like a dream to Odalie, and, indeed, from the incongruity of her mental images she hardly knew whether she was sleeping or waking. One moment it seemed to her that she was in Carolina, in the new frame mansion that she had always thought so fine, sitting on the arm of her grandmother's chair, with her dark hair against the white locks and the snowy cap, while she babbled, in the sweet household patois of French children that has no lexicon, and no rules, and is handed down from one generation to another, her girlish hopes, and plans, and anxieties, to find the grandmother's fine, old, deft hand smooth all the difficulties away and make life easy, and hope possible, and trouble a mere shadow. Alas! that brightening perspective of the colonial garden, where the jasmine, gold and white, clung to the tall trellises, and the clove gillyflower, and the lilies and roses grew in the borders in the broad suffusions of the sunshine, was metamorphosed to the wide spread of the Tennessee River, with the noon-day blaze on its burnished expanse of ripples; and grand'maman had long since ceased her ministry of soothing and consolation, and found her own comfort in the peace and quiet of the grave. And ere Odalie could suffer more than a pang to realize that she was so far from that grave, her head drooped once more--she was asleep.