The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-07-16

not boast of his Indian blood then. He procured an appointment for George as a cadet at West Point and Virginia was sent to a fashionable boarding school in the north. Four years passed before keep the most obstreperous slave in order. home by the waters of the Suwanee.
 Every summer his father and mother came north and visited him at "the point" rather wilful young woman and consid- erable of belle at Saratoga, Ballston Spa and Newport, came also to West Point to see her cadet brother. But Vir- ginia, even after her graduation from the fashionable young ladies boarding school had not returned home, and no news could George get of Powell or of to the fashionable watering places Arens Ringgold still, it seemed, in pursuit of Virginia. As the time for Georges grad uation drew near there reached the point rumors of trouble with the Florida ln- dians. The government desired to re- move the tribe to a western reserva- ton, and the Seminoles desired to stay of a young Indian leader who seemed to have become the most influential man among the Seminoles-one Osceola. George, of course, did not recognize Pow ell under that name. but much he thought of his old friend and of Mau- mee. When some of the young men de- cared that one company of regulars would march through the whole Seminole country George shook his head. But they laughed at him.
 Virginia returned to the plantation; George was graduated, received his com mission as a lieutenant in the Rifles and went on leave to visit his old home. There was no father to greet Randolph when he arrived at the old plantation only weeping mother and sister. His father had died while George was on his journey south. He found the clouds of war hanging over his native state. Of Maumee and Powell-whom he now knew to be that Osceola of whom he had heard he would get no news. The Ringgolds, by some underhanded and sharp practice, had got possession of the Powell planta- tion and evicted its lawful owners, who had disappeared into the forests, At this news the animosity which George had all ways felt against the Ringgold family gained fresh force.
 But he was allowed little time for either grief or hatred. Scarcely had he time to survey the old scenes from which he had now been so long absent when orders arrived directing him to report with all possible dispatch to Fort King, post where the garrison was being strength ened and where a commissioner rom Washington was to make final effort to have the Seminoles consent to their re- moval to Q reservation beyond the Missis- sippi. Troops were daily arriving at Tampa. All the posts In Florida were being strengthened and more troops were on their way from the north. Coercion had been resolved upon.
 In the fruitless negotiations which fol- lowed the meeting of the Seminole chiefs at Fort King, and in the war which fol- lowed, George took an active part Yet, though he did his duty gallantly, as be- came him as soldier, his heart was in reality always depressed by the thought that he was fighting against people whom he believed to have been wronged and against the brother of Maumee." He met Osceola at the Fort King confer ence, where the young chief shook hands with him and regretted that the fortunes of war and the decrees of fate should make them enemies. Maumee, Osceola told him. was well and with her mother in safe place. Several times after in the course of the disastrous campaign-which sacre and the defeat of the Withlacooshee did George and Osceola meee in battle and ambush, and several times did Osce-