Todd?«

»Oh! sir, I am of opinion that the gentleman will soon be well, as I said before; the wownd isn't in a vital part, and as the ball was extracted so soon, and the shoulder was what I call well attended to, I do not think there is as much danger as there might have been.«

»I say, Squire Doolittle,« continued the attorney, raising his voice, »you are a magistrate, and know what is law, and what is not law. I ask you, sir, if shooting a man is a thing that is to be settled so very easily? Suppose, sir, that the young man had a wife and family; and suppose that he was a mechanic, like yourself, sir; and suppose that his family depended on him for bread; and suppose that the ball, instead of merely going through the flesh, had broken the shoulder-blade, and crippled him for ever; – I ask you all, gentlemen, supposing this to be the case, whether a jury wouldn't give what I call handsome damages?«

As the close of this supposititious case was addressed to the company, generally, Hiram did not, at first, consider himself called on for a reply; but finding the eyes of the listeners bent on him in expectation, he remembered his character for judicial discrimination, and spoke, observing a due degree of deliberation and dignity.

»Why, if a man should shoot another,« he said, »and if he should do it on purpose, and if the law took notice on't, and if a jury should find him guilty, it would be likely to turn out a state-prison matter.«

»It would so, sir,« returned the attorney. – »The law, gentlemen, is no respecter of persons, in a free country. It is one of the great blessings that has been handed down to us from our ancestors, that all men are equal in the eye of the law, as they are by nater. Though some may get property, no one knows how, yet they are not privileged to trangress the laws, any more than the poorest citizen in the state. This is my notion, gentlemen; and I think that if a man had a mind to bring this matter up, something might be made out of it, that would help pay for the salve – ha! Doctor?«

»Why, sir,« returned the physician, who appeared a little uneasy at the turn the conversation was taking, »I have the promise of Judge Temple, before men – not but what I would take his word as soon as his note of hand – but it was before men. Let me see – there was Mounshier Ler Quow, and Squire Jones, and Major Hartmann, and Miss Pettibone, and one or two of the blacks by, when he said that his pocket would amply reward me for what I did.«

»Was the promise made before or after the service was performed?« asked the attorney.

»It might have been both,« returned the discreet physician, »though I'm certain he said so, before I undertook the dressing.«

»But it seems that he said his pocket should reward you, Doctor,« observed Hiram; »now I don't know that the law will hold a man to such a promise: he might give you his pocket with sixpence in't, and tell you to take your pay out on't.«

»That would not be a reward in the eye of the law,« interrupted the attorney – »not what is called a ›quid pro quo;‹ nor is the pocket to be considered as an agent, but as part of a man's own person, that is, in this particular. I am of opinion that an action would lie on that promise, and I will undertake to bear him out, free of costs, if he don't recover.«

To this proposition the physician made no reply, but he was observed to cast his eyes around him, as if to enumerate the witnesses, in order to substantiate this promise also, at a future day, should it prove necessary. A subject so momentous, as that of suing Judge Temple, was not very palatable to the present company, in so public a place; and a short silence ensued, that was only interrupted by the opening of the door, and the entrance of Natty himself.

The old hunter carried in his hand his never-failing companion, the rifle; and, although all of the company were uncovered, excepting the lawyer, who wore his hat on one side, with a certain dam'me air, Natty moved to the front of one of the fires, without in the least altering any part of his dress or appearance. Several questions were addressed to him, on the subject of the game he had killed, which he answered readily, and with some little interest; and the landlord, between whom and Natty there existed much cordiality, on account of their both having been soldiers in youth, offered him a glass of a liquid, which, if we might judge from its reception, was no unwelcome guest. When the forester had gotten his potation also, he quietly took his seat on the end of one of the logs, that lay nigh the fires, and the slight interruption, produced by his entrance, seemed to be forgotten.

»The testimony of the blacks could not be taken, sir,« continued the lawyer, »for they are all the property of Mr. Jones, who owns their time. But there is a way by which Judge Temple, or any other man, might be made to pay for shooting another, and for the cure in the bargain. – There is a way, I say, and that without going into the ›court of errors‹ too.«

»And a mighty big error ye would make of it, Mister Todd,« cried the landlady, »should ye be putting the matter into the law at all, with Joodge Temple, who has a purse as long as one of them pines on the hill, and who is an asy man to dale wid, if yees but mind the humour of him. He's a good man is Joodge Temple, and a kind one, and one who will be no the likelier to do the pratty thing, bekaase ye would wish to tarrify him wid the law. I know of but one objaction to the same, which is an over carelessness about his sowl. It's nather a Methodie, nor a Papish, nor a Prasbetyrian, that he is, but jist nothing at all; and it's hard to think that he ›who will not fight the good fight, under the banners of a rig'lar church, in this world, will be mustered among the chosen in heaven,‹ as my husband, the Captain there, as ye call him, says – though there is but one captain that I know, who desaarves the name. I hopes, Lather-stocking, ye'll no be foolish, and putting the boy up to try the law in the matter; for 'twill be an evil day to ye both, when ye first turn the skin of so paceable an animal as a sheep into a bone of contention. The lad is wilcome to his drink for nothing, until his shouther will bear the rifle ag'in.«

»Well, that's gin'rous,« was heard from several mouths at once, for this was a company in which a liberal offer was not thrown away; while the hunter, instead of expressing any of that indignation which he might be supposed to feel, at hearing the hurt of his young companion alluded to, opened his mouth, with the silent laugh for which he was so remarkable; and after he had indulged his humour, made this reply –

»I know'd the Judge would do nothing with his smooth-bore, when he got out of his sleigh. I never see'd but one smooth-bore, that would carry at all, and that was a French ducking-piece, upon the big lakes: it had a barrel half as long ag'in as my rifle, and would throw fine shot into a goose, at a hundred yards; but it made dreadful work with the game, and you wanted a boat to carry it about in. When I went with Sir William ag'in the French, at Fort Niagara, all the rangers used the rifle; and a dreadful weepon it is, in the hands of one who knows how to charge it, and keeps a steady aim. The Captain knows, for he says he was a soldier in Shirley's, and though they were nothing but baggonet-men, he must know how we cut up the French and Iroquois in the skrimmages, in that war. Chingachgook, which means ›Big Sarpent‹ in English, old John Mohegan, who lives up at the hut with me, was a great warrior then, and was out with us; he can tell all about it, too; though he was overhand for the tomahawk, never firing more than once or twice, before he was running in for the scalps. Ah! times is dreadfully altered since then. Why, Doctor, there was nothing but a foot-path, or at the most a track for pack-horses, along the Mohawk, from the Garman Flats up to the forts. Now, they say, they talk of running one of them wide roads with gates on't, along the river; first making a road, and then fencing it up! I hunted one season back of the Kaatskills, nigh-hand to the settlements, and the dogs often lost the scent, when they com'd to them highways, there was so much travel on them; though I can't say that the brutes was of a very good breed. – Old Hector will wind a deer in the fall of the year, across the broadest place in the Otsego, and that is a mile and a half, for I paced it myself on the ice, when the tract was first surveyed under the Indian grant.«

»It sames to me, Natty, but a sorry compliment, to call your cumrad after the evil one,« said the landlady; »and it's no much like a snake that old John is looking now. Nimrood would be a more besaming name for the lad, and a more Christian too, seeing that it comes from the Bible. The Sargeant read me the chapter about him, the night before my christening, and a mighty asement it was, to listen to any thing from the book.«

»Old John and Chingachgook were very different men to look on,« returned the hunter, shaking his head at his melancholy recollections. – »In the ›fifty-eight war,‹ he was in the middle of manhood, and taller than now by three inches.