d bear's meat, that hung in his lodge in winter. It
is now gone; it will not keep in warm weather. Who shall bring it back
again? Some thought the brother would not forget his sister, and that,
next winter, he would see that the lodge should not be empty. We thought
this; but the Panther yelled, and followed the husband on the path of
death. They are now trying which shall first reach the Happy Hunting
Grounds. Some think the Lynx can run fastest, and some think the Panther
can jump the farthest. The Sumach thinks both will travel so fast and so
far that neither will ever come back. Who shall feed her and her young?
The man who told her husband and her brother to quit her lodge, that
there might be room for him to come into it. He is a great hunter, and
we know that the woman will never want."

"Ay, Huron this is soon settled, accordin' to your notions, but it goes
sorely ag'in the grain of a white man's feelin's. I've heard of men's
saving their lives this-a-way, and I've know'd them that would prefar
death to such a sort of captivity. For my part, I do not seek my end,
nor do I seek matrimony."

"The pale-face will think of this, while my people get ready for the
council. He will be told what will happen. Let him remember how hard it
is to lose a husband and a brother. Go; when we want him, the name of
Deerslayer will be called."

This conversation had been held with no one near but the speakers. Of
all the band that had so lately thronged the place, Rivenoak alone was
visible. The rest seemed to have totally abandoned the spot. Even the
furniture, clothes, arms, and other property of the camp had entirely
disappeared, and the place bore no other proofs of the crowd that had so
lately occupied it, than the traces of their fires and resting places,
and the trodden earth that still showed the marks of their feet. So
sudden and unexpected a change caused Deerslayer a good deal of surprise
and some uneasiness, for he had never known it to occur, in the course
of his experience among the Delawares. He suspected, however, and
rightly, that a change of encampment was intended, and that the mystery
of the movement was resorted to in order to work on his apprehensions.

Rivenoak walked up the vista of trees as soon as he ceased speaking,
leaving Deerslayer by himself. The chief disappeared behind the covers
of the forest, and one unpractised in such scenes might have believed
the prisoner left to the dictates of his own jud