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 direct course, towards the place for which he was heading, passing presently beyond the old city wall and out upon the meadows and commons to the west of it where as yet only a few houses had been built. A creek made in here; and at a small-boat landing on the shore of this creek a tall figure loomed suddenly in the darkness and held out a hand in greeting.

It was Almayne—no longer clad in hunter's garb, however, but looking a nondescript seaman in soiled, open-necked shirt and loose trousers, a blue handkerchief about his head, a cutlass strapped to his belt. A few words passed between them; then they dropped from the end of the landing into a long cypress pirogue that waited there. Amidship sat two figures almost indistinguishable in the gloom, the two Muskogee warriors of Tallasee. To these Lachlan whispered a grave greeting in their own tongue.

"Striking Hawk—Little Mink, my brothers," he said, "you have come, as you promised. It is well."

He stood before them a moment, looking from one to the other.

"My brothers," he continued, "we are Muskogee warriors of the Family of the Wind, but this night we must seem to be what we are not. I, Lachlan, am become a Spaniard of St. Augustine, and you, my brothers, are Appalache warriors, the Spaniards' friends. And we came here in a Spanish sloop that lies in the River of Stono, beyond the Wappoo marshes, so that she may not be seen from the town."

The two Indians nodded gravely. Lachlan passed