He turned his head on every side of him, as if seeking
some engine sufficiently terrible to annihilate the offending trapper
at a blow; and then, possibly recollecting the further occasion he
might have for his counsel, he forced himself to say, with an
appearance of moderation that nearly choked him--
"Stranger, I did believe this prying into the concerns of others was
the business of women in the towns and settlements, and not the manner
in which men, who are used to live where each has room for himself,
deal with the secrets of their neighbours. To what lawyer or sheriff
do you calculate to sell your news?"
"I hold but little discourse except with one and then chiefly of my
own affairs," returned the old man, without the least observable
apprehension, and pointing imposingly upward; "a Judge; and Judge of
all. Little does he need knowledge from my hands, and but little will
your wish to keep any thing secret from him profit you, even in this
desert."
The mounting tempers of his unnurtured listeners were rebuked by the
simple, solemn manner of the trapper.
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