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It was the eye of the dog! The animal lay under the couch, his muzzle flat on the clay floor. A serious yet doubtful vigilance was in his aspect. Tscholens was already at the exit, which was a narrow winding passage serving as a wind-break, and with a sudden turn leading to the outer world.
It flung a red reflection on the front of the building devoted to the conferences of the aged councilors, painted a peaceful white and facing the setting sun. At this moment was emerging from it a figure which Tscholens had not before seen. A man so old he was that even the Indian's back was bent.
In another moment the "beloved square" was filled with crowds of the Cherokees and their huddling shadows, all a medley in the last red suffusions of the sinking sun. To the tumult of eager, anxious, polite questions, Tscholens faltered to Savanukah, who had hastily returned: "N'schauwihilla! N'dagotschi! Lowanneunk undchen!" I am cold!
He heard the abrupt patter of the dog's feet on the clay floor, and a drowsy voice calling to the animal in Cherokee, admonishing him to be still. Tscholens waited without, and, as the dog issued and with half-aroused suspicions sniffed dubiously around him, he stooped down and patted the creature's head.
The red sunset was widely aflare; the dizzy rout of the shadows of the dancers, all gregarious and intricately involved in the three circles, kept the moving figures company. Tscholens, quitting the council-house, glanced but indifferently at them and then away at the lengthening perspective of the azure mountains of the Great Smoky range.
The masterly political machinations of Tscholens and the mystery in which they were enveloped did not permanently impair the cordial relations existing between his tribe and the Cherokees, for so late as 1779 a delegation of fourteen Cherokees is chronicled as appearing in the country of the Lenni Lenape at their council-fire, to condole with them on the death of their head-chief; but neither before nor since is there any record of another visit of the turbulent "grandfather" to the banks of the Tennessee River.
For as Tscholens plunged out from the sanctuary his first consciousness of the world without was the chill touch of the falling snow on his cheek, its moist, icy breath on his lips beating back his own quick, agitated respiration.
Could he hope, all unaccustomed here, to turn in that restricted space to retrace the way? Could a ray of guiding light be caught from without across this high, guarding barrier of tiers of seats? And what perchance might lurk within instead of the object of this search? At the mere thought of this object of search all fear, all vestige of anxiety vanished. Tscholens felt his heart beat fast.
Therefore, "Give me a belt!" cried Tscholens pertinaciously, offering in exchange the official belt of the Delawares, or, as they were called, Lenni Lenape. Nothing less would content him. He hardened himself as flint against all suave beguilements tending to effect a diversion of interest. He would not see the horse-race. He would not "roll the bullet."
Whereupon the Lenni Lenape themselves produced in counter-asseveration the official belt of the Cherokees, given in exchange for their own, and brought to the hand of their chief sachem by their young illau Tscholens, from Citico Town, the residence of the Chief Tsiskwa.
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