fou't atween the Mohicans and
the Mohawks, in a war of their own waging. I was then a younker, and
went out with the Delawares, because I know'd they were a scandalized
and wronged race. Forty days and forty nights did the imps crave our
blood around this pile of logs, which I designed and partly reared,
being, as you'll remember, no Indian myself, but a man without a cross.
The Delawares lent themselves to the work, and we made it good, ten to
twenty, until our numbers were nearly equal, and then we sallied out
upon the hounds, and not a man of them ever got back to tell the fate
of his party. Yes, yes; I was then young, and new to the sight of blood;
and not relishing the thought that creatures who had spirits like myself
should lay on the naked ground, to be torn asunder by beasts, or to
bleach in the rains, I buried the dead with my own hands, under that
very little hillock where you have placed yourselves; and no bad seat
does it make neither, though it be raised by the bones of mortal men."

Heyward and the sisters arose, on the instant, from the grassy
sepulcher; nor could the two latter, notwithstanding the terrific scenes
they had so recently passed through, entirely suppress an emotion of
natural horror, when they found themselves in such familiar contact with
the grave of the dead Mohawks. The gray light, the gloomy little area
of dark grass, surrounded by its border of brush, beyond which the pines
rose, in breathing silence, apparently into the very clouds, and the
deathlike stillness of the vast forest, were all in unison to deepen
such a sensation. "They are gone, and they are harmless," continued
Hawkeye, waving his hand, with a melancholy smile at their manifest
alarm; "they'll never shout the war-whoop nor strike a blow with the
tomahawk again! And of all those who aided in placing them where they
lie, Chingachgook and I only are living! The brothers and family of the
Mohican formed our war party; and you see before you all that are now
left of his race."

The eyes of the listeners involuntarily sought the forms of the Indians,
with a compassionate interest in their desolate fortune. Their dark
persons were still to be seen within the shadows of the blockhouse,
the son listening to the relation of his father with that sort of
intenseness which would be created by a narrative that redounded so much
to the honor of those whose names he had long revered for their courage
and savage virtues.

"I had th