the son! I saw it when he first came nigh, but so many things have since passed before my failing sight, that I could not name the place where I had met his likeness! Tell me, lad, by what name is your father known?”
“He was an officer of the States in the war of the revolution, of my own name of course; my mother’s brother was called Duncan Uncas Heyward.”
“Still Uncas! still Uncas!” echoed the other, trembling with eagerness. “And his father?”
“Was called the same, without the appellation of the native chief. It was to him, and to my grandmother, that the service of which I have just spoken was rendered.”
“I know’d it! I know’d it!” shouted the old man, in his tremulous voice, his rigid features working powerfully, as if the names the other mentioned awakened some long dormant emotions, connected with the events of an anterior age. “I know’d it! son or grandson, it is all the same; it is the blood, and ’tis the look! Tell me, is he they call’d Duncan, without the Uncas—is he living?”
The young man shook his head sorrowfully, as he replied in the negative.
“He died full of days and of honours. Beloved, happy, and bestowing happiness!”
“Full of days!” repeated the trapper, looking down at his own meagre, but still muscular hands. “Ah! he liv’d in the settlements, and was wise only after their fashions. But you have often seen him; and you have heard him discourse of Uncas, and of the wilderness?”
“Often! he was then an officer of the king; but when the war took place between the crown and her colonies, my grandfather did not forget his birthplace, but threw off the empty allegiance of names, and was true to his proper country; he fought on the side of liberty.”
“There was reason in it; and what is better, there was natur’! Come, sit ye down beside me, lad; sit ye down, and tell me of what your grand’ther used to speak, when his mind dwelt on the wonders of the wilderness.”
The youth smiled, no less at the importunity than at the interest manifested by the old man; but as he found there was no longer the least appearance of any violence being contemplated, he unhesitatingly complied.
“Give it all to the trapper by rule, and by figures of speech,” said Paul, very coolly taking his seat on the other side of the young soldier. “It is the fashion of old age to relish these ancient traditions, and, for that matter, I can say that I don’t dislike to listen to them myself.”
Middleton smiled again, and perhaps with a slight air of derision; but, good-naturedly turning to the trapper, he continued—
“It is a long, and might prove a painful story. Bloodshed and all the horrors of Indian cruelty and of Indian warfare are fearfully mingled in the narrative.”
“Ay, give it all to us, stranger,” continued Paul; “we are used to these matters in Kentuck, and, I must say, I think a story none the worse for having a few scalps in it!”
“But he told you of Uncas, did he?” resumed the trapper, without regarding the slight interruptions of the bee-hunter, which amounted to no more than a sort of by-play. “And what thought he and said he of the lad, in his parlour, with the comforts and ease of the settlements at his elbow?”
“I doubt not he used a language similar to that he would have adopted in the woods, and had he stood face to face, with his friend—”