“To me, dear sir, he appeared extremely skilful, and prompt, and courageous; but perhaps Cousin Richard will say I am as ignorant as the gentleman himself.”
“Gentleman!” echoed Richard; “do you call such chaps gentlemen, at school, Elizabeth?”
“Every man is a gentleman that knows how to treat a woman with respect and consideration,” returned the young lady promptly, and a little smartly.
“So much for hesitating to appear before the heiress in his shirt-sleeves,” cried Richard, winking at Monsieur Le Quoi, who returned the wink with one eye, while he rolled the other, with an expression of sympathy, toward the young lady. “Well, well, to me he seemed anything but a gentleman. I must say, however, for the lad, that he draws a good trigger, and has a true aim. He's good at shooting a buck, ha! Marmaduke?”
“Richart,” said Major Hartmann, turning his grave countenance toward the gentleman he addressed, with much earnestness, “ter poy is goot. He savet your life, and my life, and ter life of i'ominie Grant, and ter life of ter Frenchman; and, Richard, he shall never vant a pet to sleep in vile olt Fritz Hartmann has a shingle to cover his het mit.”
“Well, well, as you please, old gentleman,” returned Mr. Jones, endeavoring to look indifferent; “put him into your own stone house, if you will, Major. I dare say the lad never slept in anything better than a bark shanty in his life, unless it was some such hut as the cabin of Leather-Stocking. I prophesy you will soon spoil him; any one could see how proud he grew, in a short time, just because he stood by my horses' heads while I turned them into the highway.”
“No, no, my old friend,” cried Marmaduke, “it shall be my task to provide in some manner for the youth; I owe him a debt of my own, besides the service he has done me through my friends. And yet I anticipate some little trouble in inducing him to accept of my services. He showed a marked dislike, I thought, Bess, to my offer of a residence within these walls for life.”
“Really, dear sir,” said Elizabeth, projecting her beautiful under-lip, “I have not studied the gentleman so closely as to read his feelings in his countenance. I thought he might very naturally feel pain from his wound, and therefore pitied him; but”—and as she spoke she glanced her eye, with suppressed curiosity, toward the major-domo—“I dare say, sir, that Benjamin can tell you something about him, he cannot have been in the village, and Benjamin not have seen him often.”
“Ay! I have seen the boy before,” said Benjamin, who wanted little encouragement to speak; “he has been backing and filling in the wake of Natty Bumppo, through the mountains, after deer, like a Dutch long-boat in tow of an Albany sloop. He carries a good rifle, too, 'the Leather-Stocking said, in my hearing, before Betty Hollister's bar-room fire, no later than the Tuesday night, that the younger was certain death to the wild beasts. If so be he can kill the wild-cat that has been heard moaning on the lake-side since the hard frosts and deep snows have driven the deer to herd, he will be doing the thing that is good. Your wild-cat is a bad shipmate, and should be made to cruise out of the track of Christian men.”
“Lives he in the hut of Bumppo?” asked Marmaduke, with some interest.