James Fenimore Cooper: The Deerslayer

26. Chapter XXVI. (continued)

"Ah! Hetty, afore we land I must convarse a little with you child, and that too on matters touching your own welfare, principally. Stop paddling -or, rather, that the Mingos needn't think we are plotting and contriving, and so treat us accordingly, just dip your paddle lightly, and give the canoe a little motion and no more. That's just the idee and the movement; I see you're ready enough at an appearance, and might be made useful at a sarcumvention if it was lawful now to use one - that's just the idee and the movement! Ah's! me. Desait and a false tongue are evil things, and altogether onbecoming our colour, Hetty, but it is a pleasure and a satisfaction to outdo the contrivances of a red-skin in the strife of lawful warfare. My path has been short, and is like soon to have an end, but I can see that the wanderings of a warrior aren't altogether among brambles and difficulties. There's a bright side to a warpath, as well as to most other things, if we'll only have the wisdom to see it, and the ginerosity to own it."

"And why should your warpath, as you call it, come so near to an end, Deerslayer?"

"Because, my good girl, my furlough comes so near to an end. They're likely to have pretty much the same tarmination, as regards time, one following on the heels of the other, as a matter of course."

"I don't understand your meaning, Deerslayer -" returned the girl, looking a little bewildered. "Mother always said people ought to speak more plainly to me than to most other persons, because I'm feeble minded. Those that are feeble minded, don't understand as easily as those that have sense."

"Well then, Hetty, the simple truth is this. You know that I'm now a captyve to the Hurons, and captyves can't do, in all things, as they please -"

"But how can you be a captive," eagerly interrupted the girl -"when you are out here on the lake, in father's best canoe, and the Indians are in the woods with no canoe at all? That can't be true, Deerslayer!"