In this story the novelist had presented Leather-Stocking as a finished portrait, with his long rifle, dog Hector, and all. Cooper had described him as a man of seventy years, and intimated no purpose of carrying him over into another volume. Natty Bumppo proved to be so popular, however, that in 1826 Cooper made him an important figure in _The Last of the Mohicans_, representing him in young manhood, at the age of thirty years, and betrayed a more profound interest in the spirit of the character which he had discovered. The success of this venture encouraged the author, in the next year, to bring Leather-Stocking forward, for what he intended to be the last time, in _The Prairie_. The closing chapter of that story describes the death and burial of Leather-Stocking. But the public could not have enough of Natty Bumppo, and the result was that, after leaving him in his grave, Cooper resurrected Leather-Stocking as the hero of two more novels. In _The Pathfinder_, published in 1840, he described Natty Bumppo at the age of forty years; and _The Deerslayer_, the last published of the series, gave a youthful picture of Leather-Stocking at the age of twenty. When the _Leather-Stocking Tales_ were afterward published complete they of course followed the logical order in the presentation of the hero's life, without regard to the dates of original publication. The actual order in which they were written, however, suggests an interesting glimpse of Cooper's method of work in developing his most successful character. It is generally believed that an old hunter named Shipman, who lived in Cooperstown during Fenimore Cooper's boyhood, suggested to the novelist the picturesque character of Leather-Stocking. The persistence of this tradition requires some explanation, for it is not strikingly confirmed by what Cooper himself had to say of the matter. In the preface of the _Leather-Stocking Tales_, written after the series was complete, he said: "The author has often been asked if he had any original in his mind for the character of Leather-Stocking. In a physical sense, different individuals known to the writer in early life certainly presented themselves as models, through his recollection; but in a moral sense this man of the forest is purely a creation."