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By Root 1267 0

concerning the actual feelings of that beautiful girl, while he was too observant not to have noted the struggle she had maintained with herself, and which had so often led her to the very verge of discovery. That something extraordinary was concealed in her breast, he thought obvious enough; and, through a sentiment of manly delicacy that would have done credit to the highest human refinement, he shrank from any exposure of her secret that might subsequently cause regret to the girl herself. He therefore determined to depart now, and that without any further manifestations of feeling, either from himself or from others.

“God bless you! Sarpent—God bless you!” cried the hunter, as the canoe left the side of the platform. “Your Manitou and my God only knows when and where we shall meet ag‘in; I shall count it a great blessing, and a full reward for any little good I may have done on ’arth, if we shall be permitted to know each other, and to consort together, hereafter, as we have so long done in these pleasant woods afore us!”

Chingachgook waved his hand. Drawing the light blanket he wore over his head, as a Roman would conceal his grief in his robes, he slowly withdrew into the ark, in order to indulge his sorrow and his musings alone. Deerslayer did not speak again, until the canoe was halfway to the shore. Then he suddenly ceased paddling, at an interruption that came from the mild, musical voice of Hetty.

“Why do you go back to the Hurons, Deerslayer?” demanded the girl. “They say I am feebleminded, and such they never harm; but you have as much sense as Hurry Harry; and more too, Judith thinks, though I don’t see how that can well be.”

“Ah! Hetty, afore we land, I must convarse a little with you, child; and that, too, on matters touching your own welfare, principally. Stop paddling—or, rather, that the Mingos needn’t think we are plotting and contriving, and so treat us accordingly, just dip your paddle lightly, and give the canoe a little motion and no more. That’s just the idee and the movement; I see you’re ready enough at an appearance, and might be made useful at a sarcumvention, if it was lawful now to use one—that’s just the idee and the movement! Ah’s me! Desait and a false tongue are evil things, and altogether onbecoming our color, Hetty; but it is a pleasure and a satisfaction to outdo the contrivances of a redskin, in the strife of lawful warfare. My path has been short, and is like soon to have an end; but I can see that the wanderings of a warrior aren’t altogether among brambles and difficulties. There’s a bright side to a warpath, as well as to most other things, if we’ll only have the wisdom to see it, and the ginerosity to own it.”

“And why should your warpath, as you call it, come so near to an end, Deerslayer?”

“Because, my good girl, my furlough comes so near to an end. They’re likely to have pretty much the same tarmination, as regards time—one following on the heels of the other, as a matter of course.”

“I don’t understand your meaning, Deerslayer,” returned the girl, looking a little bewildered. “Mother always said people ought to speak more plainly to me than to most other persons, because I’m feebleminded. Those that are feebleminded don’t understand as easily as those that have sense.”

“Well then, Hetty, the simple truth is this. You know that I’m now a captyve to the Hurons, and captyves can’t do, in all things, as they please—”

“But how can you be a captive,” eagerly interrupted the girl, “when you are out here on the lake, in father’s bark canoe, and the Indians are in the woods, with no canoe at all? That can’t be true, Deerslayer!”

“I wish with all my heart and soul, Hetty, that you was right, and that I was wrong, instead of your bein’ all wrong, and my bein’ only too near the truth. Free as I seem to your eyes, gal, I’m bound hand and foot in ra’ality.”

“Well, it is a great misfortune not to have sense! Now, I can’t see, or understand, that you are a captive, or bound in any manner. If you are bound, with what are your hands and feet fastened?”

“With a furlough, gal; that