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Show 82 WESTERN WILDS. see. in Carolina, till now. And when I was able to go it seemed like a dream as if I hadn't been there a week. It was over two years I'd been gone, but every thing was right at home. After that I had business every two or three months down in the Cherokee Nation, an' all at once the troubles started up again. The rights of it I no more understood than I did the other trouble, only that Jackson had come in President, and took the part of Geawgey and Alabama agin the Injins, an' swore they'd got to go anyhow, an', then they quar-reled among themselves agin. Then her father died the little white Cherokee I mean and her mother was all put out about the troubles, but finally said she must go with her people, and claim her head-rights on the land where they was to settle. Then I spoke to the little girl well, to make a long story short, I've tried for thirty years to pay up, but I'm still in her debt, an' to me she's just as pretty as she was the mornin' she found me in the woods." And now I was sure it was no fancy, for the " old woman" had crossed the hearth and taken the gray head in her hands; the sad, dark eye was again lighted with the gleam of youthful love, the wrinkles gave place to smiles, and the worn face was transformed into something far beyond the beautiful. It was divine. " So your troubles ended in joy at last," said I. " Yes, I reckon you may say so;" then, with his pipe relighted, he puifed away in silence. He had acquired one habit of his stolid Indian friends the habit of having fits of silence, waiting on the stim-ulus of smoke. Two lads of sixteen or seventeen years came in with the proceeds of a day's hunt. " Our grandsons," said the hostess, in a half- apologetic tone, " and about all the dependence we've got now." This was her first and last observation, and we seemed in a fair way to smoke the evening away in silence, when one of the young men threw a fresh knot on the fire. It blazed up brightly, and, with In-dian suddenness, the old man broke out again : " It was a bad thing, a bad, mean thing, the way them people was rooted out. Just think of a whole people, sixteen or eighteen thou-sand, lots of ' em with good farms, an' houses, an' shops, an' startin' schools an' newspapers, havin' to pull up whether or no, with soldiers to prod them along with bayonets, an' go away off to a country they didn't like, an' where lots an' lots of ' em died ! Well, that's what they done." " You mean the Cherokees." " Yes, my wife's folks all went with ' em. So we bought a place of |