Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/255

 lake of vivid green, all the valley floor was clothed in forest, while the great mountains looming beyond—mountains that seemed as huge as Sani'gilagi itself—were mantled with forest to their rounded summits, where wisps of white cloud still clung. Beyond these again rose other mountains, range upon range, as far as her eye could see, their dim outlines merging at last with the blue of the sky; and over all these also the forest lay, blue as the sea except where it darkened to purple beneath the shadow of some drifting cloud, unending, illimitable, continuous as the sea itself.

"The Kingdom of the Cherokees," Almayne repeated. "The Empire of the Overhills. What do you think of it, Mistress?"

She did not answer. A faint sound had come to her, a sound so faint that at first she was not sure it was a sound—a strange, low throbbing. Faint as it was, it caught and held her attention instantly; for there was something in it that was compelling and insistent, something cruel and menacing. She listened keenly, and so low was it that for a moment she believed it to be only the beating of her own heart or the pulsing of blood in her ears; but, glancing at Lachlan, she knew that he also heard it and that Almayne, too, was listening.

"The war drums," said the hunter slowly. "They are beating the war drums down in Aganuntsi's town."

He pointed to the green clearing in the valley far