"
"That may do in other quarters of the colony, Deerslayer, but
it will not do here. Not a human being, the Lord excepted, owns
a foot of sile in this part of the country. Pen was never put to
paper consarning either hill or valley hereaway, as I've heard
old Tom say time and ag'in, and so he claims the best right to it
of any man breathing; and what Tom claims, he'll be very likely to
maintain."
"By what I've heard you say, Hurry, this Floating Tom must be
an oncommon mortal; neither Mingo, Delaware, nor pale-face. His
possession, too, has been long, by your tell, and altogether beyond
frontier endurance. What's the man's history and natur'?"
"Why, as to old Tom's human natur', it is not much like other men's
human natur', but more like a muskrat's human natar', seeing that
he takes more to the ways of that animal than to the ways of any
other fellow-creatur'. Some think he was a free liver on the salt
water, in his youth, and a companion of a sartain Kidd, who was
hanged for piracy, long afore you and I were born or acquainted,
and that he came up into these regions, thinking that the king's
cruisers could never cross the mountains, and that he might enjoy
the plunder peaceably in the woods.
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