edit for an honour I cannot claim," interrupted the
other.

"An under-graduate!--or perhaps your degrees have been taken in some
other of the liberal sciences?"

"Still wrong, I do assure you."

"Surely, young man, you have not entered on this important--I may say,
this awful service, without some evidence of your fitness for the task!
Some commission by which you can assert an authority to proceed, or by
which you may claim an affinity and a communion with your fellow-workers
in the same beneficent pursuits!"

"I know not by what means, or for what purposes, you have made yourself
master of my objects!" exclaimed the youth, reddening and rising with a
quickness which manifested how little he regarded the grosser appetites,
when a subject nearer his heart was approached. "Still, sir, your
language is incomprehensible. That pursuit, which in another might
perhaps be justly called beneficent, is, in me, a dear and cherished
duty; though why a commission should be demanded or needed is, I
confess, no less a subject of surprise."

"It is customary to be provided with such a document," returned the
Doctor, gravely; "and, on all suitable occasions to produce it, in
order that congenial and friendly minds may, at once, reject unworthy
suspicions, and stepping over, what may be called the elements of
discourse, come at once to those points which are desiderata to both."

"It is a strange request!" the youth muttered, turning his frowning eye
from one to the other, as if examining the characters of his companions,
with a view to weigh their physical powers. Then, putting his hand into
his bosom, he drew forth a small box, and extending it with an air of
dignity towards the Doctor, he continued--"You will find by this, sir,
that I have some right to travel in a country which is now the property
of the American States."

"What have we here!" exclaimed the naturalist, opening the folds of
a large parchment. "Why, this is the sign-manual of the philosopher,
Jefferson! The seal of state! Countersigned by the minister of war!
Why this is a commission creating Duncan Uncas Middleton a captain of
artillery!"

"Of whom? of whom?" repeated the trapper, who had sat regarding the
stranger, during the whole discourse, with eyes that seemed greedily to
devour each lineament. "How is the name? did you call him Uncas?--Uncas!
Was it Uncas?"

"Such is my name," returned the youth, a little haughtily. "It is the
appellation of a nativ