“Because, my good girl, my furlough comes so near to an end. They're likely to have pretty much the same tarmination, as regards time, one following on the heels of the other, as a matter of course.”
“I don't understand your meaning, Deerslayer—” returned the girl, looking a little bewildered. “Mother always said people ought to speak more plainly to me than to most other persons, because I'm feeble minded. Those that are feeble minded, don't understand as easily as those that have sense.”
“Well then, Hetty, the simple truth is this. You know that I'm now a captyve to the Hurons, and captyves can't do, in all things, as they please—”
“But how can you be a captive,” eagerly interrupted the girl—“when you are out here on the lake, in father's best canoe, and the Indians are in the woods with no canoe at all? That can't be true, Deerslayer!”
“I wish with all my heart and soul, Hetty, that you was right, and that I was wrong, instead of your bein' all wrong, and I bein' only too near the truth. Free as I seem to your eyes, gal, I'm bound hand and foot in ra'ality.”
“Well it is a great misfortune not to have sense! Now I can't see or understand that you are a captive, or bound in any manner. If you are bound, with what are your hands and feet fastened?”
“With a furlough, gal; that's a thong that binds tighter than any chain. One may be broken, but the other can't. Ropes and chains allow of knives, and desait, and contrivances; but a furlough can be neither cut, slipped nor sarcumvented.”
“What sort of a thing is a furlough, then, if it be stronger than hemp or iron? I never saw a furlough.”
“I hope you may never feel one, gal; the tie is altogether in the feelin's, in these matters, and therefore is to be felt and not seen. You can understand what it is to give a promise, I dare to say, good little Hetty?”
“Certainly. A promise is to say you will do a thing, and that binds you to be as good as your word. Mother always kept her promises to me, and then she said it would be wicked if I didn't keep my promises to her, and to every body else.”