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“How can you torment me thus, Hetty! Certainly, I am one of the truest friends he has on earth.”

“Torment you! yes, now I remember all about it. I am glad you used that word, Judith, for it brings it all back to my mind. Well, he said he might be tormented by the savages, but he would try to bear it as becomes a Christian white man, and that no one need be afeard—why does Deerslayer call it afeard, when mother always taught us to say afraid?”

“Never mind, dear Hetty, never mind that now!” cried the other, almost gasping for breath. “Did Deerslayer really tell you that he thought the savages would put him to the torture? Recollect now, well, Hetty, for this is a most awful and serious thing.”

“Yes, he did; and I remember it by your speaking about my tormenting you. O! I felt very sorry for him, and Deerslayer took all so quietly and without noise! Deerslayer is not as handsome as Hurry Harry, Judith, but he is more quiet.”

“He’s worth a million Hurrys! yes, he’s worth all the young men who ever came upon the lake put together,” said Judith, with an energy and positiveness that caused her sister to wonder. “He is true. There is no lie about Deerslayer. You, Hetty, may not know what a merit it is in a man to have truth, but when you get—no—I hope you will never know it. Why should one like you be ever made to learn the hard lesson to distrust and hate!”

Judith bowed her face, dark as it was, and unseen as she must have been, by any eye but that of Omniscience, between her hands, and groaned. This sudden paroxysm of feeling, however, lasted but for a moment, and she continued more calmly, still speaking frankly to her sister, whose intelligence and whose discretion in anything that related to herself, she did not in the least distrust. Her voice, however, was low and husky, instead of having its former clearness and animation.

“It is a hard thing to fear truth, Hetty,” she said; “and yet do I more dread Deerslayer’s truth, than any enemy! One cannot tamper with such truth—so much honesty—such obstinate uprightness! But we are not altogether unequal, sister—Deerslayer and I? He is not altogether my superior?”

It was not usual for Judith so far to demean herself as to appeal to Hetty’s judgment. Nor did she often address her by the title of sister, a distinction that is commonly given by the junior to the senior, even where there is a perfect equality in all other respects. As trifling departures from habitual deportment oftener strike the imagination than more important changes, Hetty perceived the circumstances, and wondered at them in her own simple way.

Her ambition was a little quickened, and the answer was as much out of the usual course of things as the question; the poor girl attempting to refine beyond her strength.

“Superior, Judith!” she repeated with pride. “In what can Deerslayer be your superior? Are you not mother’s child—and does he know how to read—and wasn’t mother before any woman in all this part of the world? I should think, so far from supposing himself your superior, he would hardly believe himself mine. You are handsome, and he is ugly—”

“No, not ugly, Hetty,” interrupted Judith. “Only plain. But his honest face has a look in it that is far better than beauty. In my eyes Deerslayer is handsomer than Hurry Harry.”

“Judith Hutter! you frighten me. Hurry is the handsomest mortal in the world—even handsomer than you are yourself; because a man’s good looks, you know, are always better than a woman’s good looks.”

This little innocent touch of natural taste did not please the elder sister at the moment, and she did not scruple to betray it.

“Hetty, you now speak foolishly, and had better say no more on this subject,” she answered. “Hurry is not the handsomest mortal in the world, by many; and there are officers in the garrisons”—Judith stammered at the words—“ there are officers in the garrisons near us, far comelier than he. But why do you think me the equal of Deerslayer? —speak of