sternum of his broad chest. Thus a political crisis, which the event had
threatened, was averted.

Despite the evil chance that had befallen the gold-seekers, now widely
bruited abroad, stealthy efforts were ever and anon made by the hardy
frontier prospectors of those days, already busy in the richer deposits
of the Ayrate division of the Cherokee country, to pan also the sands of
the banks of the Tennessee; but the yield here was never again worth the
work, and the interest in the possibility of securing "pay gravel" in
this region died out, until the later excitements of the discovery of
the precious metal in a neighboring locality, Coca Creek, during the
last century.

The old "waste town" long remained a ruin, and at last fell away to a
mere memory.




THE BEWITCHED BALL-STICKS


At no time in the history of mankind, except during that brief
Paradisiac courtship in the Garden of Eden, has the heart of a lover
been altogether unvexed by the presence, or even the sheer suspicion, of
that baleful being commonly denominated "another." Here, however, it
would seem that the field must needs be almost as clear. The aspect of
the world was as if yet young; the swan, long ago driven from the
rivers, still snowily drifted down the silver Tennessee; the deer, the
bear, the buffalo, the wolf in countless hordes roamed at will