of the Adawehi, the Great Wizards. But evil will come of it. There is a curse upon my brother Almayne. I cannot read the curse; but when Awi Agwa shows himself again, let Almayne kill him."
Julah the Fox went on his way at daylight. He was returning to his home in the Cherokee nation in the valley of Ocona Lufta under the eastern rampart of the Smokies. Almayne, on the other hand, was bound for Charles Town, having with him three pack ponies laden with beaver skins; and the two had met by chance on the Great Path, as the long wilderness trail from the mountains to the sea was known. Almayne, being in no hurry, slept late. The sun was two hours high when he resumed his journey.
Riding his sorrel Chicasaw mare behind the plodding pack ponies, he watched with indifferent yet observant eyes the familiar panorama of the forest's teeming life. The trail wound serpent-like amid the wooded hills—a narrow road but well trodden by the hoofs of the pack trains that now used it in increasing numbers and by the moccasined feet of Indians who had traveled it perhaps for centuries before the white men came. On either side lay the forest, virgin, untouched by the axe—a park-like forest of gigantic broad-leafed trees, oak, hickory, beech and many others, whose branches
