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 for ever; though there's them living, who have seen the Garman 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."
"This is but time, my good friend," returned Mr. Grant, who began to take an interest in the welfare of his new acquaintance, "but it is for eternity that I would have you prepare. It is incumbent on you to attend places of public worship, as I am pleased to see that you have done this evening. Would it not be heedless in you to start on a day's toil of hard hunting, and leave your ramrod and flint behind you?"
"It must be a young hand in the woods," interrupted Natty, with another laugh, "that didn't know how to dress a rod out of an ash sapling, or find a fire-stone in the mountains. No, no, I never expected to live for ever; but I see, times be altering in these mountains from what they was thirty years ago, or for that matter, ten years. But might makes right, and the law is stronger than an old man, whether he is one that has much larning, or only one like me, that is better now at standing at the passes than in following the hounds, as I once used to could. Heigh-ho! I never know'd preaching come into a settlement, but it made game scearce, and raised the price of gunpowder; and that's a thing that's not as easily made as a ramrod, or an Indian flint."
The divine, perceiving that he had given his
