atty, with simple eagerness; "let me
see my own name placed in such honor. 'Tis a gin'rous gift to a man
who leaves none of his name and family behind him, in a country where
he has tarried so long."

Effingham guided his finger to the spot, and Natty followed the
windings of the letters to the end with deep interest, when he raised
himself from the tomb, and said:

"I suppose it's all right; and it's kindly thought, and kindly done!
But what have ye put over the redskin?"

"You shall hear:

"'This stone is raised to the memory of an Indian chief, of the
Delaware tribe, who was known by the several names of John Mohegan;
Mohican'"--

"Mo-hee-can, lad, they call theirselves! 'he-can."

"Mohican; 'and Chingagook'"--

"'Gach, boy; 'gach-gook; Chingachgook, which, intarpreted, means Big
Sarpent. The name should be set down right, for an Indian's name has
always some meaning in it."

"I will see it altered. 'He was the last of his people who continued
to inhabit this country; and it may be said of him that his faults
were those of an Indian, and his virtues those of a man.'"

"You never said truer word, Mr. Oliver; ah's me! if you had knowed him
as I did, in his prime, in that very battle where the old gentleman,
who sleeps by his side, saved his life, when them thieves, the
Iroquois, had him at the stake, you'd have said all that, and more
too. I cut the thongs with this very hand, and gave him my own
tomahawk and knife, seeing that the rifle was always my fav'rite
weapon. He did lay about him like a man! I met him as I was coming
home from the trail, with eleven Mingo scalps on his pole. You needn't
shudder, Madam Effingham, for they was all from shaved heads and
warriors. When I look about me, at these hills, where I used to count
sometimes twenty smokes, curling over the tree-tops, from the Delaware
camps, it raises mournful thoughts, to think that not a redskin is
left of them all; unless it be a drunken vagabond from the Oneidas, or
them Yankee Indians, who, they say, be moving up from the sea-shore;
and who belong to none of God's creatures, to my seeming, being, as it
were, neither fish nor flesh--neither white man nor savage. Well,
well! the time has come at last, and I must go"--

"Go!" echoed Edwards, "whither do you go?"

The Leather-Stocking, who had imbibed, unconsciously, many of the
Indian qualities, tho he always thought of himself as of a civilized
being, compared with even the Delawares, ave