shot over the face of the last speaker, was not without a gentle and
interested expression. Instantly recovering his composure, he arose, and,
turning to the double leathern sack, which had been borne on the crupper
of his nag, and which now lay at no great distance from his seat, he drew
a pair of horseman's pistols from two well-contrived pockets in its sides,
and laid them deliberately on the table.

"Though little disposed to seek an encounter with any bearing the image of
man," he said, "I have not neglected the usual precautions of those who
enter the wilderness. Here are weapons that, in steady hands, might easily
take life, or, at need preserve it."

The young Mark drew near with boyish curiosity, and while one finger
ventured to touch a lock, as he stole a conscious glance of wrong-doing
towards his mother, he said, with as much of contempt in his air, as the
schooling of his manners would allow--

"An Indian arrow would make a surer aim, than a bore as short as this!
When the trainer from the Hartford town, struck the wild-cat on the hill
clearing, he sent the bullet from a five-foot, barrel; besides, this
short-sighted gun would be a dull weapon in a hug against the keen-edged
knife, that the wicked Wampanoag is known to carry."--

"Boy, thy years are few, and thy boldness of speech marvellous," sternly
interrupted his parent in the second degree.

The stranger manifested no displeasure at the confident language of
the lad. Encouraging him with a look, which plainly proclaimed that
martial qualities in no degree lessened the stripling in his favor, he
observed that--