ed by the other's
warmth. "Hurry Harry must act for himself, and do that which will be
most likely to suit his own fancy. The course he means to take will give
him an easy race, if it don't give him an easy conscience. Next comes
the question with Hist--what say you gal?--Will you desart your duty,
too, and go back to the Mingos and take a Huron husband, and all not
for the love of the man you're to marry, but for the love of your own
scalp?"

"Why you talk so to Hist!" demanded the girl half-offended. "You t'ink
a red-skin girl made like captain's lady, to laugh and joke with any
officer that come."

"What I think, Hist, is neither here nor there in this matter. I must
carry back your answer, and in order to do so it is necessary that you
should send it. A faithful messenger gives his ar'n'd, word for word."

Hist no longer hesitated to speak her mind fully. In the excitement she
rose from her bench, and naturally recurring to that language in which
she expressed herself the most readily, she delivered her thoughts
and intentions, beautifully and with dignity, in the tongue of her own
people.

"Tell the Hurons, Deerslayer," she said, "that they are as ignorant as
moles; they don't know the wolf from the dog. Among my people, the rose
dies on the stem where it budded, the tears of the child fall on the
graves of its parents; the corn grows where the seed has been planted.
The Delaware girls are not messengers to be sent, like belts of wampum,
from tribe to tribe. They are honeysuckles, that are sweetest in their
own woods; their own young men carry them away in their bosoms, because
they are fragrant; they are sweetest when plucked from their native
stems. Even the robin and the martin come back, year after year, to
their old nests; shall a woman be less true hearted than a bird? Set the
pine in the clay and it will turn yellow; the willow will not flourish
on the hill; the tamarack is healthiest in the swamp; the tribes of the
sea love best to hear the winds that blow over the salt water. As for
a Huron youth, what is he to a maiden of the Lenni Lenape. He may
be fleet, but her eyes do not follow him in the race; they look back
towards the lodges of the Delawares. He may sing a sweet song for the
girls of Canada, but there is no music for Wah, but in the tongue she
has listened to from childhood. Were the Huron born of the people that
once owned the shores of the salt lake, it would be in vain, unless he
were of t