"Why, the Judge has just stept into his office, with that master-carpenter, Mister Doolittle; but Miss Lizzy is in that there parlour. I say, Master Oliver, we'd like to have had a bad job of that panther, or painter's work—some calls it one, and some calls it t'other—but I know little of the beast, seeing that it's not of British growth. I said as much as that it was in the hills, the last winter; for I heard it moaning on the lake-shore, one evening in the fall, when I was pulling down from the fishing point in the skiff. Had the animal come into the open water, where a man could see where and how to work his vessel, I would have engaged the thing myself; but looking aloft among the trees, is all the same to me as standing on the deck of one ship and looking at another vessel's tops. I never can tell one rope from another"———
"Well, well," interrupted Edwards; "I must see Miss Temple."
"And you shall see her, sir," said the steward; "she's in this here room. Oh! Lord, Master Edwards, what a loss she'd have been to the Judge! Dam'me if I know where he would have gotten such another daughter; that is, full-grown, d'ye see. I say, sir, this Master Bumppo is a worthy man, and seems to have a handy way with him, with fire arms and boat-hooks. I'm his friend, Master Oliver, and he and you may both set me down as the same."
"We may want your friendship, my worthy fellow," cried Edwards, squeezing his hand convulsively—"we may want your friendship, in which case, you shall know it."
Without waiting to hear the earnest reply that (Benjamin meditated, the youth extricated himself from the vigorous grasp of the steward, and entered the parlour.
