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.
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