cessary," said Hutter, glancing through the leaves of his cover, as if
he already distrusted the presence of an enemy on the opposite shore of
the narrow and sinuous stream. "It wants but an hour or so of night,
and to move in the dark will be impossible, without making a noise that
would betray us. Did you hear the echo of a piece in the mountains,
half-an-hour since?"

"Yes, old man, and heard the piece itself," answered Hurry, who now felt
the indiscretion of which he had been guilty, "for the last was fired
from my own shoulder."

"I feared it came from the French Indians; still it may put them on the
look-out, and be a means of discovering us. You did wrong to fire in
war-time, unless there was good occasion.

"So I begin to think myself, Uncle Tom; and yet, if a man can't trust
himself to let off his rifle in a wilderness that is a thousand miles
square, lest some inimy should hear it, where's the use in carrying
one?"

Hutter now held a long consultation with his two guests, in which the
parties came to a true understanding of their situation. He explained
the difficulty that would exist in attempting to get the ark out of
so swift and narrow a stream, in the dark, without making a noise that
could not fail to attract Indian ears. Any strollers in their vicinity
would keep near the river or the lake; but the former had swampy shores
in many places, and was both so crooked and so fringed with bushes, that
it was quite possible to move by daylight without incurring much danger
of being seen. More was to be apprehended, perhaps, from the ear than
from the eye, especially as long as they were in the short, straitened,
and canopied reaches of the stream.

"I never drop down into this cover, which is handy to my traps, and
safer than the lake from curious eyes, without providing the means of
getting out ag'in," continued this singular being; "and that is easier
done by a pull than a push. My anchor is now lying above the suction, in
the open lake; and here is a line, you see, to haul us up to it. Without
some such help, a single pair of bands would make heavy work in forcing
a scow like this up stream. I have a sort of a crab, too, that lightens
the pull, on occasion. Jude can use the oar astern as well as myself;
and when we fear no enemy, to get out of the river gives us but little
trouble."

"What should we gain, Master Hutter, by changing the position?" asked
Deerslayer, with a good deal of earnestness; "thi