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 Cherokee war, he had remained for weeks wounded and sick on Sani'gilagi. He had pointed out to her a small opening in the forest clothing the valley under them and had told her that if she watched it, she would see sometimes a thin, dark line drawn across it. A buffalo road, the main highway of the herds travelling back and forth across the barrier of the Blue Mountains, crossed that opening," he said, and when she saw that thin, dark line, she would know that buffalo were passing.

She saw the dark line twice. She saw, too, great flocks of wild turkeys come flying in above the valley to their roost on the mountain side some distance farther down the ridge. In the shadowy glade sloping down to her left, aglow with flame azalea and pink kalmia, she often saw deer come silently out of the woods and graze quietly, unaware of her presence, while all around her and on the slopes below her the wood thrushes sang. And from this spot she saw also many other things: the changing light upon the valley and the heights beyond as the sun sank lower; the smaller creatures of the woods, foxes and rabbits and squirrels and striped brown chipmunks, which, as evening approached, came out of the surrounding forest into the open glade on her left hand.

She loved to sit here in this secret place and watch the life around her; yet often her eyes saw nothing of what was before her because her thoughts were elsewhere—in England, perhaps, or in Charles Town, or in the distant Indian town where Gilbert Barradell