Howsever, Hist has a ready mind, and she's one of
them that doesn't always need to have a thing afore her, to see it.
I'll warrant you she'll not be either two minutes or two feet out
of the way, unless them jealous vagabonds, the Mingos, have taken
the alarm, and put her as a stool-pigeon to catch us, or have hid
her away, in order to prepare her mind for a Huron instead of a
Mohican husband."
"Deerslayer," interrupted the girl, earnestly; "this is a most
dangerous service; why do you go on it, at all?"
"Anan! - Why you know, gal, we go to bring off Hist, the Sarpent's
betrothed - the maid he means to marry, as soon as we get back to
the tribe."
"That is all right for the Indian - but you do not mean to marry
Hist - you are not betrothed, and why should two risk their lives
and liberties, to do that which one can just as well perform?"
"Ah - now I understand you, Judith - yes, now I begin to take the
idee. You think as Hist is the Sarpent's betrothed, as they call
it, and not mine, it's altogether his affair; and as one man can
paddle a canoe he ought to be left to go after his gal alone! But
you forget this is our ar'n'd here on the lake, and it would not
tell well to forget an ar'n'd just as the pinch came.
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