every child paused in its play, sprawling where it lay, "I am obliged to
you for your polite expression of opinion of me, which I have never done
aught to justify. I have nothing more to urge upon the question of the
details which brought me hither, but of one thing be certain,--if Emsden
does not go upon this mission _I_ shall be the ambassador. I apprehend
no danger whatever to myself, and I wish you a very good day."

And he stepped forth with his wonted jaunty alacrity, leaving the man
and his wife staring at each other with as much surprise as if the roof
had fallen in.

A greater surprise awaited Mivane without. The rain was falling anew. In
vast transparent tissues it swept with the gusty wind over the nearest
mountains of the Great Smoky Range, whose farther reaches were lost in
fog. The slanting lines, vaguely discerned in the downpour, almost
obliterated the presence of the encompassing forests about the stockade.
He noted how wildly the great trees were yet swaying, and he realized,
for he could not have heard the blast, that a sudden severe wind-storm
had passed over the settlement while he was within doors. The
blockhouse, the tallest of the buildings, loomed up darkly amidst the
gathering gray vapor, and through the great gates of the stockade, which
opened on the blank cloud, were coming at the moment several men bearing
a rude litter, evidently hastily constructed. On this was stretched the
insensible form of Ralph Emsden, who had been stricken down in the woods
with a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm by the falling of a branch
of a great tree uprooted by the violence of the gusts. He had almost
miraculously escaped being crushed, and was not fatally hurt, but
examination disclosed that he was absolutely and hopelessly disabled for
the time being, and Richard Mivane realized that he himself was the duly
accredited ambassador to the herders on the Keowee River.