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“You can advise Hetty as you land,” she said, hastily; “I intend that she shall accompany you to the shore.”

“Is this wise, Judith? It’s true that, under common sarcumstances, a feeble mind is a great protection among redskins; but when their feelin’s are up, and they’re bent on revenge, it’s hard to say what may come to pass. Besides—”

“What were you about to say, Deerslayer?” asked Judith, whose gentleness of voice and manner amounted nearly to tenderness, though she struggled hard to keep her emotions and apprehensions in subjection.

“Why, simply that there are sights and doin’s that one even as little gifted with reason and memory as Hetty, here, might better not witness. So, Judith, you would do well to let me land alone, and to keep your sister back.”

“Never fear for me, Deerslayer,” put in Hetty, who comprehended enough of the discourse to know its general drift; “I’m feebleminded, and that, they say, is an excuse for going anywhere; and what that won’t excuse will be overlooked on account of the Bible I always carry. It is wonderful, Judith, how all sorts of men, the trappers as well as the hunters, redmen as well as white, Mingos as well as Delawares, do reverence and fear the Bible!”

“I think you have not the least ground to fear any injury, Hetty,” answered the sister, “and therefore I shall insist on your going to the Huron camp with our friend. Your being there can do no harm, not even to yourself, and may do great good to Deerslayer.”

“This is not a moment, Judith, to dispute; and so have the matter your own way,” returned the young man. “Get yourself ready, Hetty, and go into the canoe, for I’ve a few parting words to say to your sister, which can do you no good.”

Judith and her companion continued silent, until Hetty had so far complied as to leave them alone, when Deerslayer took up the subject as if it had been interrupted by some ordinary occurrence, and in a very matter-of-fact way.

“Words spoke at parting, and which may be the last we ever hear from a fri‘nd, are not soon forgotten,” he repeated, “and so, Judith, I intend to speak to you like a brother, seein’ I’m not old enough to be your father. In the first place, I wish to caution you ag’in your inimies, of which two may be said to ha‘nt your very footsteps, and to beset your ways. The first is oncommon good looks, which is as dangerous a foe to some young women as a whole tribe of Mingos could prove, and which calls for great watchfulness; not to admire and praise; but to distrust and sarcumvent. Yes, good looks may be sarcumvented, and fairly outwitted, too. In order to do this, you’ve only to remember that they melt like the snows; and, when once gone, they never come back ag’in. The seasons come and go, Judith; and if we have winter, with storms and frosts, and spring, with chills and leafless trees, we have summer, with its sun and glorious skies, and fall, with its fruits, and a garment thrown over the forest that no beauty of the town could rummage out of all the shops in America. ‘Arth is an eternal round, the goodness of God bringing back the pleasant when we’ve had enough of the onpleasant. But it’s not so with good looks. They are lent for a short time in youth, to be used and not abused; and as I never met with a young woman to whom Providence has been as bountiful as it has to you, Judith, in this par-tic’ lar, I warn you, as it might be with my dyin’ breath, to beware of the inimy; fri’nd or inimy, as we deal with the gift.”

It was so grateful to Judith to hear these unequivocal admissions of her personal charms, that much would have been forgiven to the man who made them, let him be who he might. But, at that moment, and from a far better feeling, it would not have been easy for Deerslayer seriously to offend her; and she listened with a patience which, had it been foretold only a week earlier, would have excited her indignation to hear.

“I understand your meaning, Deerslayer,” returned the girl, with a meekness and humility that a little surprised her listener, “and hope to be able to profit by it. But you have mentioned