for I like your voice and your smile, and your way of thinking
in every thing, except about the scalps--"

"No t'ink more of him--no say more of scalp--" interrupted Hist,
soothingly--"You pale-face, I red-skin; we bring up different fashion.
Deerslayer and Chingachgook great friend, and no the same colour, Hist
and--what your name, pretty pale-face?"

"I am called Hetty, though when they spell the name in the bible, they
always spell it Esther."

"What that make?--no good, no harm. No need to spell name at
all--Moravian try to make Wah-ta-Wah spell, but no won't let him. No
good for Delaware girl to know too much--know more than warrior some
time; that great shame. My name Wah-ta-Wah that say Hist in your tongue;
you call him, Hist--I call him, Hetty."

These preliminaries settled to their mutual satisfaction, the two girls
began to discourse of their several hopes and projects. Hetty made her
new friend more fully acquainted with her intentions in behalf of her
father, and, to one in the least addicted to prying into the affairs,
Hist would have betrayed her own feelings and expectations in connection
with the young warrior of her own tribe. Enough was revealed on both
sides, however, to let each party get a tolerable insight into the views
of the other, though enough still remained in mental reservation,
to give rise to the following questions and answers, with which the
interview in effect closed. As the quickest witted, Hist was the first
with her interrogatories. Folding an arm about the waist of Hetty, she
bent her head so as to look up playfully into the face of the other,
and, laughing, as if her meaning were to be extracted from her looks,
she spoke more plainly.

"Hetty got broder, as well as fader?--" she said--"Why no talk of
broder, as well as fader?"

"I have no brother, Hist. I had one once, they say, but he is dead many
a year, and lies buried in the lake, by the side of my mother."

"No got broder--got a young warrior--Love him, almost as much as fader,
eh? Very handsome, and brave-looking; fit to be chief, if he good as he
seem to be."

"It's wicked to love any man as well as I love my father, and so I
strive not to do it, Hist," returned the conscientious Hetty, who knew
not how to conceal an emotion, by an approach to an untruth as venial as
an evasion, though powerfully tempted by female shame to err, "though I
sometimes think wickedness will get the better of me, if Hurry comes so
often