think it no disgrace to consort with a fellow-creatur' that has never
yet slain his kind."

"I wish I knew what has brought that skulking Delaware into this part of
the country so early in the season," muttered Hurry to himself, in a way
to show equally distrust and a recklessness of its betrayal. "Where did
you say the young chief was to give you the meeting!"

"At a small round rock, near the foot of the lake, where they tell me,
the tribes are given to resorting to make their treaties, and to bury
their hatchets. This rock have I often heard the Delawares mention,
though lake and rock are equally strangers to me. The country is claimed
by both Mingos and Mohicans, and is a sort of common territory to
fish and hunt through, in time of peace, though what it may become in
war-time, the Lord only knows!"

"Common territory" exclaimed Hurry, laughing aloud. "I should like to
know what Floating Tom Hutter would say to that! He claims the lake as
his own property, in vartue of fifteen years' possession, and will not
be likely to give it up to either Mingo or Delaware without a battle for
it!"

"And what will the colony say to such a quarrel! All this country must
have some owner, the gentry pushing their cravings into the wilderness,
even where they never dare to ventur', in their own persons, to look at
the land they own."

"That may do in other quarters of the colony, Deerslayer, but it will
not do here. Not a human being, the Lord excepted, owns a foot of sile
in this part of the country. Pen was never put to paper consarning
either hill or valley hereaway, as I've heard old Tom say time and
ag'in, and so he claims the best right to it of any man breathing; and
what Tom claims, he'll be very likely to maintain."

"By what I've heard you say, Hurry, this Floating Tom must be an
oncommon mortal; neither Mingo, Delaware, nor pale-face. His possession,
too, has been long, by your tell, and altogether beyond frontier
endurance. What's the man's history and natur'?"

"Why, as to old Tom's human natur', it is not much like other men's
human natur', but more like a muskrat's human natar', seeing that he
takes more to the ways of that animal than to the ways of any other
fellow-creatur'. Some think he was a free liver on the salt water, in
his youth, and a companion of a sartain Kidd, who was hanged for piracy,
long afore you and I were born or acquainted, and that he came up into
these regions, thinking that the king's