see
them opened and handled."

"Hetty sleeps--" answered Judith, huskily. "Happily for her, fine
clothes and riches have no charms. Besides she has this night given her
share of all that the chest may hold to me, that I may do with it as I
please."

"Is poor Hetty compass enough for that, Judith?" demanded the
just-minded young man. "It's a good rule and a righteous one, never to
take when them that give don't know the valie of their gifts; and such
as God has visited heavily in their wits ought to be dealt with as
carefully as children that haven't yet come to their understandings."

Judith was hurt at this rebuke, coming from the person it did, but
she would have felt it far more keenly had not her conscience fully
acquitted her of any unjust intentions towards her feeble-minded but
confiding sister. It was not a moment, however, to betray any of her
usual mountings of the spirit, and she smothered the passing sensation
in the desire to come to the great object she had in view.

"Hetty will not be wronged," she mildly answered; "she even knows not
only what I am about to do, Deerslayer, but why I do it. So take your
seat, raise the lid of the chest, and this time we will go to the
bottom. I shall be disappointed if something is not found to tell us
more of the history of Thomas Hutter and my mother."

"Why Thomas Hutter, Judith, and not your father? The dead ought to meet
with as much reverence as the living!"

"I have long suspected that Thomas Hutter was not my father, though I
did think he might have been Hetty's, but now we know he was the father
of neither. He acknowledged that much in his dying moments. I am old
enough to remember better things than we have seen on this lake, though
they are so faintly impressed on my memory that the earlier part of my
life seems like a dream."

"Dreams are but miserable guides when one has to detarmine about
realities, Judith," returned the other admonishingly. "Fancy nothing and
hope nothing on their account, though I've known chiefs that thought 'em
useful."

"I expect nothing for the future from them, my good friend, but cannot
help remembering what has been. This is idle, however, when half an hour
of examination may tell us all, or even more than I want to know."

Deerslayer, who comprehended the girl's impatience, now took his seat
and proceeded once more to bring to light the different articles that
the chest contained. As a matter of course, all that had bee