• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Have the Hurons suffered you to quit them in this manner, without watch or guard?”

“Sartain—I couldn’t have come in any other manner, unless, indeed, it had been by a bold rising, or a sarcumvention.”

“What pledge have they that you will ever return?”

“My word,” answered the hunter, simply. “Yes, I own I gave ’em that, and big fools would they have been to let me come without it! Why, in that case, I shouldn’t have been obliged to go back and ondergo any deviltries their fury may invent, but might have shouldered my rifle, and made the best of my way to the Delaware villages. But, Lord! Judith, they know’d this, just as well as you and I do, and would no more let me come away, without a promise to go back, than they would let the wolves dig up the bones of their fathers!”

“Is it possible you mean to do this act of extraordinary self destruction and recklessness?”

“Anan! ”

“I ask if it can be possible that you expect to be able to put yourself again in the power of such ruthless enemies, by keeping your word?”

Deerslayer looked at his fair questioner for a moment with stern displeasure. Then the expression of his honest and guileless face suddenly changed, lighting as by a quick illumination of thought; after which he laughed in his ordinary manner.

“I didn’t understand you at first, Judith; no, I didn’t. You believe that Chingachgook and Hurry Harry won’t suffer it; but you don’t know mankind thoroughly yet, I see. The Delaware would be the last man on ‘arth to offer any objections to what he knows is a duty; and, as for March, he doesn’t care enough about any creatur’ but himself to spend many words on such a subject. If he did ’twould make no great difference, howsever; but not he—for he thinks more of his gains than of even his own word. As for my promises, or your‘n, Judith, or anybody else’s, they give him no consarn. Don’t be under any oneasiness, therefore, gal; I shall be allowed to go back according to the furlough; and if difficulties was made, I’ve not been brought up, and edicated, as one may say, in the woods, without knowing how to look ’em down.”

Judith made no answer for some little time. All her feelings as a woman—and as a woman who, for the first time in her life, was beginning to submit to that sentiment which has so much influence on the happiness or misery of her sex—revolted at the cruel fate that she fancied Deerslayer was drawing down upon himself, while the sense of right, which God has implanted in every human breast, told her to admire an integrity as indomitable and unpretending as that which the other so unconsciously displayed. Argument, she felt, would be useless; nor was she, at that moment, disposed to lessen the dignity and high principle that were so striking in the intentions of the hunter, by any attempt to turn him from his purpose. That something might yet occur to supersede the necessity for this selfimmolation, she tried to hope; and then she proceeded to ascertain the facts, in order that her own conduct might be regulated by her knowledge of circumstances.

“When is your furlough out, Deerslayer?” she asked, after both canoes were heading towards the ark, and moving, with scarcely a perceptible effort of the paddles, through the water.

“Tomorrow noon; not a minute afore; and you may depend on it, Judith, I shan’t quit what I call Christian company, to go and give myself up to them vagabonds, an instant sooner than is downright necessary. They begin to fear a visit from the garrisons, and wouldn’t lengthen the time a moment; and it’s pretty well understood atween us, that, should I fail in my arr’nd, the torments are to take place when the sun begins to fall, that they may strike upon their home trail as soon as it is dark.”

This was said solemnly, as if the thought of what was believed to be in reserve duly weighed on the prisoner’s mind, and yet so simply, and without a parade of suffering, as rather to repel than to invite any open manifestations of sympathy.

“Are they bent on revenging their losses?” Judith asked, faintly, her own high spirit yielding