Chapter 24 - Page 2

them opened and handled."

"Hetty sleeps -" answered Judith, huskily. "Happily for her, fine
clothes and riches have no charms. Besides she has this night
given her share of all that the chest may hold to me, that I may
do with it as I please."

"Is poor Hetty compass enough for that, Judith?" demanded the
just-minded young man. "It's a good rule and a righteous one, never
to take when them that give don't know the valie of their gifts;
and such as God has visited heavily in their wits ought to be
dealt with as carefully as children that haven't yet come to their
understandings."

Judith was hurt at this rebuke, coming from the person it did,
but she would have felt it far more keenly had not her conscience
fully acquitted her of any unjust intentions towards her feeble-minded
but confiding sister. It was not a moment, however, to betray any
of her usual mountings of the spirit, and she smothered the passing
sensation in the desire to come to the great object she had in
view.

"Hetty will not be wronged," she mildly answered; "she even knows
not only what I am about to do, Deerslayer, but why I do it. So
take your seat, raise the lid of the chest, and this time we will
go to the bottom. I shall be disappointed if something is not
found to tell us more of the history of Thomas Hutter and my mother."

"Why Thomas Hutter, Judith, and not your father? The dead ought
to meet with as much reverence as the living!"

"I have long suspected that Thomas Hutter was not my father, though
I did think he might have been Hetty's, but now we know he was the
father of neither. He acknowledged that much in his dying moments.
I am old enough to remember better things than we have seen on
this lake, though they are so faintly impressed on my memory that
the earlier part of my life seems like a dream."

"Dreams are but miserable guides when one has to detarmine about
realities, Judith," returned the other admonishingly. "Fancy nothing
and hope nothing on their account, though I've known chiefs that
thought 'em useful."

"I expect nothing for the future from them, my good friend, but
cannot help remembering what has been. This is idle, however, when
half an hour of examination may tell us all, or even more than I
want to know."

Deerslayer, who comprehended the girl's impatience, now took his
seat and proceeded once more to bring to light the different articles
that the chest contained. As a matter of course, all that had been
previously examined were found where they had been last deposited,
and they excited much less interest or comment than when formerly