ons he experienced to
advert to her manner. There was something so soothing to the humility of
a man of his temperament, to hear qualities that he could not but know
he possessed himself, thus highly extolled by the loveliest female he
had ever beheld, that, for the moment, his faculties seemed suspended
in a natural and excusable pride. Then it was that the idea of the
possibility of such a creature as Judith becoming his companion for life
first crossed his mind. The image was so pleasant, and so novel, that
he continued completely absorbed by it for more than a minute, totally
regardless of the beautiful reality that was seated before him, watching
the expression of his upright and truth-telling countenance with a
keenness that gave her a very fair, if not an absolutely accurate clue
to his thoughts. Never before had so pleasing a vision floated before
the mind's eye of the young hunter, but, accustomed most to practical
things, and little addicted to submitting to the power of his
imagination, even while possessed of so much true poetical feeling in
connection with natural objects in particular, he soon recovered his
reason, and smiled at his own weakness, as the fancied picture faded
from his mental sight, and left him the simple, untaught, but highly
moral being he was, seated in the Ark of Thomas Hutter, at midnight,
with the lovely countenance of its late owner's reputed daughter,
beaming on him with anxious scrutiny, by the light of the solitary lamp.

"You're wonderful handsome, and enticing, and pleasing to look on,
Judith!" he exclaimed, in his simplicity, as fact resumed its ascendency
over fancy. "Wonderful! I don't remember ever to have seen so beautiful
a gal, even among the Delawares; and I'm not astonished that Hurry Harry
went away soured as well as disapp'inted!"

"Would you have had me, Deerslayer, become the wife of such a man as
Henry March?"

"There's that which is in his favor, and there's that which is ag'in
him. To my taste, Hurry wouldn't make the best of husbands, but I fear
that the tastes of most young women, hereaway, wouldn't be so hard upon
him."

"No--no--Judith without a name would never consent to be called Judith
March! Anything would be better than that."

"Judith Bumppo wouldn't sound as well, gal; and there's many names that
would fall short of March, in pleasing the ear."

"Ah! Deerslayer, the pleasantness of the sound, in such cases, doesn't
come through the ear, but thr