leasure that he did not affect to conceal, roughly interrupting
further speech.

"Doctrine or no doctrine," said the sturdy woodsman, "'tis the belief of
knaves, and the curse of an honest man. I can credit that yonder Huron
was to fall by my hand, for with my own eyes I have seen it; but nothing
short of being a witness will cause me to think he has met with any
reward, or that Chingachgook there will be condemned at the final day."

"You have no warranty for such an audacious doctrine, nor any covenant
to support it," cried David who was deeply tinctured with the subtle
distinctions which, in his time, and more especially in his province,
had been drawn around the beautiful simplicity of revelation, by
endeavoring to penetrate the awful mystery of the divine nature,
supplying faith by self-sufficiency, and by consequence, involving those
who reasoned from such human dogmas in absurdities and doubt; "your
temple is reared on the sands, and the first tempest will wash away its
foundation. I demand your authorities for such an uncharitable assertion
(like other advocates of a system, David was not always accurate in his
use of terms). Name chapter and verse; in which of the holy books do you
find language to support you?"

"Book!" repeated Hawkeye, with singular and ill-concealed disdain; "do
you take me for a whimpering boy at the apronstring of one of your old
gals; and this good rifle on my knee for the feather of a goose's
wing, my ox's horn for a bottle of ink, and my leathern pouch for a
cross-barred handkercher to carry my dinner? Book! what have such as I,
who am a warrior of the wilderness, though a man without a cross, to
do with books? I never read but in one, and the words that are written
there are too simple and too plain to need much schooling; though I may
boast that of forty long and hard-working years."

"What call you the volume?" said David, misconceiving the other's
meaning.

"'Tis open before your eyes," returned the scout; "and he who owns it
is not a niggard of its use. I have heard it said that there are men who
read in books to convince themselves there is a God. I know not but man
may so deform his works in the settlement, as to leave that which is so
clear in the wilderness a matter of doubt among traders and priests. If
any such there be, and he will follow me from sun to sun, through the
windings of the forest, he shall see enough to teach him that he is a
fool, and that the greatest of