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As soon as the body of Deerslayer was withed in bark sufficiently to create a lively sense of helplessness, he was literally carried to a young tree, and bound against it in a way that effectually prevented him from moving, as well as from falling. The hands were laid flat against the legs, and thongs were passed over all, in a way nearly to incorporate the prisoner with the tree.
This needed only to be withed directly to a pony's tail, as they used to do in ancient Ireland, and the picture of prehistoric agriculture would have been complete. After the corn was up, all cultivating was done with the hoe. For this the entire family turned out, the toddlers being left to play in the furrows while their mother toiled like a man.
By the middle of May we began rolling in for the raft. As soon as they were floating, the logs were withed together and moored in sections. The bay became presently a quaking, redolent plain of timber.
That night while the patriarch dozed in his hickory withed chair with his pipe drooping from his wrinkled lips his granddaughter slipped quietly out of the house and went over to the tree. Out there magic was making under an early summer moon that clothed the peaks in silvery softness and painted shadows of cobalt in the hollows.
We had our meal cooking in a few minutes our dinner, really, for D'ri said it was near noon. Having eaten, we crawled out of the window, and then D'ri began to pry the logs apart. "Ain't much 'fraid o' their tumblin' on us," said he. "They 're withed so they 'll stick together." We got to another cave under the logs, at the water's edge, after an hour of crawling and prying.
"Let up, you painted riptyles let up!" cried Hurry, too hard pressed to be particular about the terms he used; "isn't it enough that I am withed like a saw-log that ye must choke too!"
Got t' be movin'. They 'll be efter us, mebbe 's the fust place they 'd look." A few logs were stranded on the stony point of the island. We withed three others to mine, setting sail with two bits of driftwood for paddles. We pulled for the south shore, but the current carried us rapidly down-river.
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