rted his face to conceal
the workings of his muscles, as he stooped to lift a large pack from
behind the tomb, which he placed deliberately on his shoulders.

"Go!" exclaimed Elizabeth, approaching him with a hurried step; "you
should not venture so far in the woods alone, at your time of life,
Natty; indeed, it is imprudent. He is bent, Effingham, on some distant
hunting."

"What Mrs. Effingham tells you is true, Leather-Stocking," said
Edwards; "there can be no necessity for your submitting to such
hardships now! So throw aside your pack, and confine your hunt to the
mountains near us, if you will go."

"Hardship! 'tis a pleasure, children, and the greatest that is left me
on this side the grave."

"No, no; you shall not go to such a distance," cried Elizabeth, laying
her white hand on his deerskin pack; "I am right! I feel his
camp-kettle, and a canister of powder! he must not be suffered to
wander so far from us, Oliver; remember how suddenly Mohegan dropt
away."

"I knowed the parting would come hard, children; I knowed it would!"
said Natty, "and so I got aside to look at the graves by myself, and
thought if I left ye the keepsake which the Major gave me, when we
first parted in the woods, ye wouldn't take it unkind, but would know
that, let the old man's body go where it might, his feeling stayed
behind him."

"This means something more than common!" exclaimed the youth; "where
is it, Natty, that you purpose going?"

The hunter drew nigh him with a confident, reasoning air, as if what
he had to say would silence all objections, and replied:

"Why, lad, they tell me that on the Big Lakes there's the best of
hunting, and a great range, without a white man on it, unless it may
be one like myself. I'm weary of living in clearings, and where the
hammer is sounding in my ears from sunrise to sundown. And tho I'm
much bound to ye both, children--I wouldn't say it if it was not
true--I crave to go into the woods ag'in, I do."

"Woods!" echoed Elizabeth, trembling with her feelings; "do you not
call these endless forests woods?"

"Ah! child, these be nothing to a man that's used to the wilderness. I
have took but little comfort sin' your father come on with his
settlers; but I wouldn't go far, while the life was in the body that
lies under the sod there. But now he's gone, and Chingachgook is gone;
and you be both young and happy. Yes! the big house has rung with
merriment this month past! And now, I thought