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The Deerslayer

By JAMES FENIMORE COOPER Condensation by ALFRED S. CLARK WHEN the young white hunters, Deerslayer and Hurry Harry, reached the Lake Glimmerglass, the Hurons were on the warpath. Floating Tom Hutter, the only settler on the lake, knew the red men's ways and had built his house on piles, a quarter of a mile from shore. With him lived his daughters, Judith, handsome and flirtatious, and Hetty, a young woman with a mind of a child. Hurry Harry, a handsome giant of the woods, had been one of Judith's many wooers. Floating Tom had another home, the Ark, a crude houseboat propelled by sweeps and a sail. Here the hunters found him. As the Ark passed an overhanging sapling, warriors, bedaubed by warpaint, leaped for the roof. They fell into the lake, but yells and pattering bullets from shore told that they were out in force.