"It would be strange if I were ignorant of the service of our church, sir," returned the youth modestly; "for I was baptized in its communion and I have never yet attended public worship elsewhere. For me to use the forms of any other denomination would be as singular as our own have proved to the people here this evening."
"You give me great pleasure, my dear sir," cried the divine, seizing the other by the hand, and shaking it cordially. "You will go home with me now--indeed you must--my child has yet to thank you for saving my life. I will-listen to no apologies. This worthy Indian, and your friend, there, will accompany us. Bless me! to think that' he has arrived at manhood in this country, without entering a dissenting * meeting-house!"
* The divines of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States commonly call other denominations Dissenters, though there never was an established church in their own country!
"No, no," interrupted the Leather-Stocking, "I must away to the wigwam; there's work there that mustn't be forgotten for all your churchings and merry-makings. Let the lad go with you in welcome; he is used to keeping company with ministers, and talking of such matters; so is old John, who was christianized by the Moravians abouts the time of the old war. But I am a plain unlarned man, that has sarved both the king and his country, in his day, agin' the French and savages, but never so much as looked into a book, or larnt a letter of scholarship, in my born days. I've never seen the use of much in-door work, though I have lived to be partly bald, and in my time have killed two hundred beaver in a season, and that without counting the other game. If you mistrust what I am telling you, you can ask Chingachgook there, for I did it in the heart of the Delaware country, and the old man is knowing to the truth of every word I say."
"I doubt not, my friend, that you have been both a valiant soldier and skilful hunter in your day," said the divine; "but more is wanting to prepare you for that end which approaches. You may have heard the maxim, that 'young men may die, but that old men must'."
"I'm sure I never was so great a fool as to expect to live forever," said Natty, giving one of his silent laughs; "no man need do that who trails the savages through the woods, as I have done, and lives, for the hot months, on the lake streams. I've a strong constitution, I must say that for myself, as is plain to be seen; for I've drunk the Onondaga water a hundred times, while I've been watching the deer-licks, when the fever-an'-agy seeds was to be seen in it as plain and as plenty as you can see the rattle snakes on old Crumhorn. But then I never expected to hold out forever; though there's them living who have seen the German flats a wilderness; ay! and them that's larned, and acquainted with religion, too; though you might look a week, now, and not find even the stump of a pine on them; and that's a wood that lasts in the ground the better part of a hundred years after the tree is dead."