as he often is.«
    »Your suspicions are just. Give me the canoe: I am young and strong, and
will get down there yet, perhaps, in time to interrupt his plans. Heaven forbid,
that we should be at the mercy of such a man!«
    His proposal was accepted, the deer being placed in the skiff in order to
lighten the canoe, and in less than five minutes the little vessel of bark was
gliding over the glassy lake, and was soon hid by the points of land, as it shot
close along the shore.
    Mohegan followed slowly with the skiff, while Natty called his hounds to
him, bade them keep close, and, shouldering his rifle, he ascended the mountain,
with an intention of going to the hut by land.
 

                                 Chapter XXVIII

 »Ask me not what the maiden feels,
 Left in that dreadful hour alone;
 Perchance, her reason stoops, or reels;
 Perchance, a courage not her own,
 Braces her mind to desperate tone.«
                                                    Scott, Marmion, VI.xxix.1-5.
 
While the chase was occurring on the lake, Miss Temple and her companion pursued
their walk on the mountain. Male attendants, on such excursions, were thought to
be altogether unnecessary, for none were ever known to offer an insult to a
female who respected herself. After the embarrassment, created by the parting
discourse with Edwards, had dissipated, the girls maintained a conversation that
was as innocent and cheerful as themselves.
    The path they took led them but a short distance above the hut of
Leather-stocking, and there was a point in the road which commanded a bird's-eye
view of the sequestered spot.
    From a feeling, that might have been natural, and must have been powerful,
neither of the friends, in their frequent and confidential dialogues, had ever
trusted herself to utter one syllable concerning the equivocal situation in
which the young man, who was now so intimately associated with them, had been
found. If Judge Temple had deemed it prudent to make any inquiries on the
subject, he had also thought it proper to keep the answers to himself; though it
was so common an occurrence to find the well-educated youth of the eastern
states, in every stage of their career to wealth, that the simple circumstance
of his intelligence, connected with his poverty, would not, at that day, and in
that country, have excited any very powerful curiosity. With his breeding it
might have been different; but the youth himself had so effectually guarded
against surprise on this subject, by his cold