to this. Howsever,
the truth is soon told, and that will put an end to all expectations on
this head. Mingo, I'm white and Christian born; 't would ill become me
to take a wife, under red-skin forms, from among heathen. That which
I wouldn't do, in peaceable times, and under a bright sun, still less
would I do behind clouds, in order to save my life. I may never marry;
most likely Providence in putting me up here in the woods, has intended
I should live single, and without a lodge of my own; but should such a
thing come to pass, none but a woman of my own colour and gifts shall
darken the door of my wigwam. As for feeding the young of your dead
warrior, I would do that cheerfully, could it be done without discredit;
but it cannot, seeing that I can never live in a Huron village. Your
own young men must find the Sumach in venison, and the next time she
marries, let her take a husband whose legs are not long enough to
overrun territory that don't belong to him. We fou't a fair battle, and
he fell; in this there is nothin' but what a brave expects, and should
be ready to meet. As for getting a Mingo heart, as well might you expect
to see gray hairs on a boy, or the blackberry growing on the pine.
No--no Huron; my gifts are white so far as wives are consarned; it is
Delaware, in all things touchin' Injins."

These words were scarcely out of the mouth of Deerslayer, before a
common murmur betrayed the dissatisfaction with which they had been
heard. The aged women, in particular, were loud in their expressions of
disgust, and the gentle Sumach, herself, a woman quite old enough to be
our hero's mother, was not the least pacific in her denunciations.
But all the other manifestations of disappointment and discontent were
thrown into the background, by the fierce resentment of the Panther.
This grim chief had thought it a degradation to permit his sister to
become the wife of a pale-face of the Yengeese at all, and had only
given a reluctant consent to the arrangement-one by no means unusual
among the Indians, however--at the earnest solicitations of the
bereaved widow; and it goaded him to the quick to find his condescension
slighted, the honor he had with so much regret been persuaded to accord,
condemned. The animal from which he got his name does not glare on his
intended prey with more frightful ferocity than his eyes gleamed on the
captive, nor was his arm backward in seconding the fierce resentment
that almost consumed hi