profusion as to cover the very ground with fluttering victims.

Leather-Stocking was a silent but uneasy spectator of all these
proceedings, but was able to keep his sentiments to himself until he
saw the introduction of the swivel into the sports.

“This comes of settling a country!” he said. “Here have I known the
pigeon to fly for forty long years, and, till you made your clearings,
there was nobody to skeart or to hurt them, I loved to see them come
into the woods, for they were company to a body, hurting nothing
—being, as it was, as harmless as a garter-snake. But now it gives me
sore thoughts when I hear the frighty things whizzing through the air,
for I know it’s only a motion to bring out all the brats of the
village. Well, the Lord won’t see the waste of his creatures for
nothing, and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as others, by
and by. There’s Mr. Oliver as bad as the rest of them, firing into
the flocks as if he was shooting down nothing but Mingo warriors.”
Among the sportsmen was Billy Kirby, who, armed with an old musket,
was loading, and, without even looking into the air, was firing and
shouting as his victims fell even on his own person. He heard the
speech of Natty, and took upon himself to reply:

“What! old Leather-Stocking,” he cried, “grumbling at the loss of a
few pigeons! If you had to sow your wheat twice, and three times, as I
have done, you wouldn’t be so massyfully feeling toward the divils.
Hurrah, boys! scatter the feathers! This is better than shooting at a
turkey’s head and neck, old fellow.”

“It’s better for you, maybe, Billy Kirby,” replied the indignant old
hunter, “and all them that don’t know how to put a ball down a rifle-