The calm and deep silence which succeeded these words, sufficiently announced the awful reverence with which his people received the communication of the patriarch. None dared to answer, though all listened in breathless expectation of what might follow. Uncas, however, looking in his face, with the fondness and veneration of a favoured child, presumed on his own high and acknowledged rank, to reply.
"Four warriors of his race have lived and died," he said, "since the friend of Tamenund led his people in battle. The blood of the Turtle has been in many chiefs, but all have gone back into the earth, from whence they came, except Chingachgook and his son."
"It is true—it is true," returned the sage—a flash of recollection destroying all his pleasing fancies, and restoring him, at once, to a consciousness of the true history of his nation. "Our wise men have often said that two warriors of the 'unchanged' race were in the hills of the Yengeese; why have their seats at the council-fires of the Delawares been so long empty?"
