the soil!" cried Elizabeth, whose melancholy had vanished in the excitement of their dialogue.
"Do I bear the marks of my lineage so very plainly impressed on my appearance?" asked the youth, with a little pique in his manner. "I am dark, but not very red not more so than common?"
"Rather more so, just now," said the heiress.
"I am sure, Miss Temple," cried Louisa, "you cannot have taken much notice of Mr. Edwards. His eyes are not so black as Mohegan's, or even your own, nor is his hair!"
"Very possibly, then, I can lay claim to the same descent. It would be a great relief to my mind to think so, for I own that I grieve when I see old Mohegan walking about these lands, like the ghost of one of their ancient possessors, and feel how small is my right to possess them."
"Do you!" cried the youth, with a vehemence that startled the ladies.
"I do, indeed," returned Elizabeth, after suffering a moment to pass in her surprise; "but what can I do? what can my father do? Should we offer the old man a home and a maintenance, his habits would compel him to refuse us. Neither, were we so silly as to wish such a thing, could we convert these clearings and farms, again, into hunting-grounds, as the Leather-stocking would wish to see them."
"You speak the truth, Miss Temple," said Edwards. "What can you do, indeed! But there is one thing that I am certain you can and will do, when you become the mistress of these beautiful valleys—use your wealth with indulgence to the poor and charity to the needy;—indeed, you can do no more."
"And that will be doing a good deal," said Louisa, smiling in her turn. "But there will,
