ned by a wiser mind than belongs to mortal weakness--but if I were
to choose a change, it would be to say, that such as they who have lived
long together in friendship and kindness, and who have proved their
fitness to go in company, by many acts of suffering and daring in each
other's behalf, should be permitted to give up life at such times, as
when the death of one leaves the other but little reason to wish to
live."

"Is it an Indian, that you see?" demanded the impatient Middleton.

"Red-skin or White-skin it is much the same. Friendship and use can tie
men as strongly together in the woods as in the towns--ay, and for that
matter, stronger. Here are the young warriors of the prairies.--Often
do they sort themselves in pairs, and set apart their lives for deeds
of friendship; and well and truly do they act up to their promises.
The death-blow to one is commonly mortal to the other! I have been a
solitary man much of my time, if he can be called solitary, who has
lived for seventy years in the very bosom of natur', and where he could
at any instant open his heart to God, without having to strip it of the
cares and wickednesses of the settlements--but making that allowance,
have I been a solitary man; and yet have I always found that intercourse
with my kind was pleasant, and painful to break off, provided that the
companion was brave and honest. Brave, because a skeary comrade in the
woods," suffering his eyes inadvertently to rest a moment on the person
of the abstracted naturalist, "is apt to make a short path long; and
honest, inasmuch as craftiness is rather an instinct of the brutes, than
a gift becoming the reason of a human man."

"But the object, that you saw--was it a Sioux?"

"What the world of America is coming to, and where the machinations and
inventions of its people are to have an end, the Lord, he only knows. I
have seen, in my day, the chief who, in his time, had beheld the first
Christian that placed his wicked foot in the regions of York! How much
has the beauty of the wilderness been deformed in two short lives! My
own eyes were first opened on the shores of the Eastern sea, and well
do I remember, that I tried the virtues of the first rifle I ever bore,
after such a march, from the door of my father to the forest, as a
stripling could make between sun and sun; and that without offence to
the rights, or prejudices, of any man who set himself up to be the owner
of the beasts of the fields. Natu