own weight-"

"Nay--nay--good Sumach," interrupted Deerslayer, whose love of truth was
too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole with patience, even though
it came from the torn breast of a widow--"Nay--nay, good Sumach, this is
a little outdoing red-skin privileges. Young man was neither, any more
than you can be called a young woman, and as to the Great Spirit's
intending that they should fall otherwise than they did, that's a
grievous mistake, inasmuch as what the Great Spirit intends is sartain
to come to pass. Then, agin, it's plain enough neither of your fri'nds
did me any harm; I raised my hand ag'in 'em on account of what they were
striving to do, rather than what they did. This is nat'ral law, 'to do
lest you should be done by.'"

"It is so. Sumach has but one tongue; she can tell but one story. The
pale face struck the Hurons lest the Hurons should strike him. The
Hurons are a just nation; they will forget it. The chiefs will shut
their eyes and pretend not to have seen it; the young men will believe
the Panther and the Lynx have gone to far off hunts, and the Sumach will
take her children by the hand, and go into the lodge of the pale-face
and say--'See; these are your children; they are also mine--feed us, and
we will live with you.'"

"The tarms are onadmissable, woman, and though I feel for your losses,
which must be hard to bear, the tarms cannot be accepted. As to givin'
you ven'son, in case we lived near enough together, that would be no
great expl'ite; but as for becomin' your husband, and the father of your
children, to be honest with you, I feel no callin' that-a-way."

"Look at this boy, cruel pale-face; he has no father to teach him to
kill the deer, or to take scalps. See this girl; what young man will
come to look for a wife in a lodge that has no head? There are more
among my people in the Canadas, and the Killer of Deer will find as many
mouths to feed as his heart can wish for."

"I tell you, woman," exclaimed Deerslayer, whose imagination was far
from seconding the appeal of the widow, and who began to grow restive
under the vivid pictures she was drawing, "all this is nothing to me.
People and kindred must take care of their own fatherless, leaving them
that have no children to their own loneliness. As for me, I have no
offspring, and I want no wife. Now, go away Sumach; leave me in the
hands of your chiefs, for my colour, and gifts, and natur' itself cry
out ag'in the idee of taking