"
"Look at this boy, cruel pale-face; he has no father to teach him
to kill the deer, or to take scalps. See this girl; what young man
will come to look for a wife in a lodge that has no head? There
are more among my people in the Canadas, and the Killer of Deer
will find as many mouths to feed as his heart can wish for."
"I tell you, woman," exclaimed Deerslayer, whose imagination was
far from seconding the appeal of the widow, and who began to grow
restive under the vivid pictures she was drawing, "all this is nothing
to me. People and kindred must take care of their own fatherless,
leaving them that have no children to their own loneliness. As for
me, I have no offspring, and I want no wife. Now, go away Sumach;
leave me in the hands of your chiefs, for my colour, and gifts,
and natur' itself cry out ag'in the idee of taking you for a wife."
It is unnecessary to expatiate on the effect of this downright refusal
of the woman's proposals. If there was anything like tenderness
in her bosom -and no woman was probably ever entirely without that
feminine quality - it all disappeared at this plain announcement.
Fury, rage, mortified pride, and a volcano of wrath burst out, at
one explosion, converting her into a sort of maniac, as it might
beat the touch of a magician's wand.
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