Master Western, civility to girls, at your time of life, comes as easy as taking in the slack of the ensign halyards; and if you will just keep an eye to her kid and can, while I join the mess of the Pathfinder and our Indian friends, I make no doubt she will remember it.”

Master Cap uttered more than he was aware of at the time. Jasper Western did look to the wants of Mabel, and she long remembered the kind, manly attention of the young sailor at this their first interview. He placed the end of a log for a seat, obtained for her a delicious morsel of the venison, gave her a draught of pure water from the spring, and as he sat near and opposite to her, fast won his way to her esteem by his gentle but frank manner of manifesting his care; homage that woman always wishes to receive, but which is never so flattering or so agreeable as when it comes from the young to those of their own age—from the manly to the gentle. Like most of those who pass their time excluded from the society of the softer sex, young Western was earnest, sincere, and kind in his attentions, which, though they wanted a conventional refinement that perhaps Mabel never missed, had those winning qualities that prove very sufficient as substitutes. Leaving these two inexperienced and unsophisticated young people to become acquainted through their feelings rather than their expressed thoughts, we will turn to the group in which the uncle, with a facility of taking care of himself that never deserted him, had already become a principal actor.

The party had taken their places around a platter of venison steaks, which served for the common use, and the discourse naturally partook of the characters of the different individuals that composed it. The Indians were silent and industrious, the appetite of the aboriginal American for venison being seemingly inappeasable, while the two white men were communicative and discursive, each of the latter being garrulous and opinionated in his way. But, as the dialogue will serve to put the reader in possession of certain facts that may render the succeeding narrative more clear, it will be well to record it.

“There must be satisfaction in this life of yours, no doubt, Master Pathfinder,” continued Cap, when the hunger of the travelers was so far appeased that they began to pick and choose among the savory morsels; “it has some of the chances and luck that we seamen like, and if ours is all water, yours is all land.”

“Nay, we have water, too, in our journeyings and marches,” returned his white companion. “We border men handle the paddle and the spear almost as much as the rifle and the hunting knife.”

“Aye; but do you handle the brace and bowline; the wheel and the lead line; the reef-point and the top-rope? The paddle is a good thing, no doubt, in a canoe, but of what use is it in the ship?”

“Nay, I respect all men in their callings, and I can believe the things you mention have their uses. One who has lived, like myself, in company with many tribes understands differences in usages. The paint of a Mingo is not the paint of a Delaware; and he who should expect to see a warrior in the dress of a squaw might be disapp’inted. I’m not very old, but I have lived in the woods, and have some acquaintance with human natur’. I never believed much in the larning of them that dwell in towns, for I never yet met with one that had an eye for a rifle or a trail.”

“That’s my manner of reasoning, Master Pathfinder, to a yarn. Walking about streets, going to church of Sundays, and hearing sarmons never yet made a man of a human being. Send the boy out upon the broad ocean, if you wish to open his eyes, and let him look upon foreign nations, or what I call the face of natur’, if you wish him to understand his own character. Now, there is my brother-in-law, the sergeant: he is as good a fellow as ever broke a biscuit, in his own way; but what is he, after all? Why, nothing but a sojer. A sergeant, to be sure, but that is a sort of a sojer, you know. When he wished to marry poor Bridget, my sister, I told the girl what he was, as in duty bound, and what she might expect from such a husband; but you know how it is with girls when their minds are jammed by an inclination. It is true, the sergeant has risen in his calling, and they say he is an important man at the fort; but his poor wife has not lived to see it at all, for she has now been dead these fourteen years.”

“A soldier’s calling is an honorable calling, provided he has fi’t only on the side of right,” returned the Pathfinder; “and as the Frenchers are always wrong and His Sacred Majesty and these colonies are always right, I take it the sergeant has a quiet conscience as well as a good character. I have never slept more sweetly than when I have fi’t the Mingos, though it is the law with me to fight always like a white man and never like an Injin. The Sarpent, here, has his fashions, and I have mine; yet have we fou’t, side by side, these many years, without either’s thinking a hard thought consarning the other’s ways. I tell him there is but one heaven and one hell, notwithstanding his traditions, though there are many paths to both.”

“That is rational, and he is bound to believe you, though I fancy most of the roads to the last are on dry land. The sea is what my poor sister, Bridget, used to call a ‘purifying place,’ and one is out of the way of temptation when out of sight of land. I doubt if as much can be said in favor of your lakes, up hereaway.”

“That towns and settlements lead to sin, I will allow; but our lakes are bordered by the forests, and one is every day called upon to worship God in such a temple. That men are not always the same, even in the wilderness, I must admit, for the difference atween a Mingo and a Delaware is as plain to be seen as the difference atween the sun and moon. I am glad, friend Cap, that we have met, however, if it be only that you may tell the Big Sarpent, here, that there be lakes in which the water is salt. We have been pretty much of one mind since our acquaintance begun, and if the Mohican has only half the faith in me that I have in him, he believes all that I have told him touching the white men’s ways and natur’s laws; but it has always seemed to me that none of the redskins have given as free a belief as an honest man likes to the accounts of the Big Salt Lakes and to that of there being rivers that flow upstream.”

“This comes of getting things wrong end foremost,” answered Cap, with a condescending nod. “You have thought of your lakes and rifts as the ship, and of the ocean and the tides as the boat. Neither Arrowhead nor the Serpent need doubt what you have said concerning both, though I confess myself to some difficulty in swallowing the tale about there being inland seas at all, and still more that there is any sea of fresh water. I have come this long journey as much to satisfy my own eyes and palate concerning these facts as to oblige the sergeant and Magnet; though the first was my sister’s husband, and I love the last like a child.”

“You are wrong—you are wrong, friend Cap, very wrong to distrust the power of God in anything,” returned Pathfinder earnestly. “Them that live in the settlements and the towns get to have confined and unjust opinions consarning the might of His hand, but we who pass our time in his very presence, as it might be, see things differently—I mean such of us as have white natur’s.