in the
camp?"

The Delaware heard and understood all that passed, though with Indian
gravity and finesse he had sat with averted face, seemingly inattentive
to a discourse in which he had no direct concern. Thus appealed to,
however, he answered his friend in his ordinary sententious manner.

"Six--" he said, holding up all the fingers of one hand, and the thumb
of the other, "besides this." The last number denoted his betrothed,
whom, with the poetry and truth of nature, he described by laying his
hand on his own heart.

"Did you see her, chief--did you get a glimpse of her pleasant
countenance, or come close enough to her ear, to sing in it the song she
loves to hear?"

"No, Deerslayer--the trees were too many, and leaves covered their
boughs like clouds hiding' the heavens in a storm. But"--and the young
warrior turned his dark face towards his friend, with a smile on it that
illuminated its fierce-looking paint and naturally stern lineaments
with a bright gleam of human feeling, "Chingachgook heard the laugh of
Wah-ta-Wah, and knew it from the laugh of the women of the Iroquois. It
sounded in his ears, like the chirp of the wren."

"Ay, trust a lovyer's ear for that, and a Delaware's ear for all sounds
that are ever heard in the woods. I know not why it is so, Judith, but
when young men--and I dares to say it may be all the same with young
women, too--but when they get to have kind feelin's towards each other,
it's wonderful how pleasant the laugh, or the speech becomes, to the
other person. I've seen grim warriors listening to the chattering and
the laughing of young gals, as if it was church music, such as is heard
in the old Dutch church that stands in the great street of Albany, where
I've been, more than once, with peltry and game."

"And you, Deerslayer," said Judith quickly, and with more sensibility
than marked her usually light and thoughtless manner,--"have you never
felt how pleasant it is to listen to the laugh of the girl you love?"

"Lord bless you gal!--Why I've never lived enough among my own colour
to drop into them sort of feelin's,--no never! I dares to say, they are
nat'ral and right, but to me there's no music so sweet as the sighing
of the wind in the tree tops, and the rippling of a stream from a full,
sparkling, natyve fountain of pure forest water--unless, indeed,"
he continued, dropping his head for an instant in a thoughtful
manner--"unless indeed it be the open mouth of a sartain