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 feeble
minded. Those that are feeble minded, 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 best 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 I 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's a thong that binds tighter than any
chain. One may be broken, but the other can't. Ropes and chains allow of
knives, and desait, and contrivances; but a furlough can be neither cut,
slipped nor sarcumvented."

"What sort of a thing is a furlough, then, if it be stronger than hemp
or iron? I never saw a furlough."

"I hope you may never feel one, gal; the tie is altogether in the
feelin's, in these matters, and therefore is to be felt and not seen.
You can understand what it is to give a promise, I dare to say, good
little Hetty?"

"Certainly. A promise is to say you will do a thing, and that binds you
to be as good as your word. Mother always kept her promises to me, and
then she said it would be wicked if I didn't keep my promises to her,
and to every body else."

"You have had a good mother, in some matters, child, whatever she may
have been in other some. That is a promise, and as you say it must be
kept. Now, I fell into the hands of the Mingos last night, and they le