king's piece to a regular double-sighted, long-barrelled rifle, Such consaits will come over men, from long habit and prejudice is perhaps the commonest failing of human natur'."

"Ashore, I grant you," said Cap. "I never return from a v'y'ge but I make the very same remark. Now, the last time I came in, I found scarcely a man in all York who would think of matters and things in general as I thought about them myself. Every man I met appeared to have bowsed all his idees up into the wind's eye, and when he did fall off a little from his one-sided notions, it was commonly to ware short round on his heel, and to lay up as close as ever on the other tack."

"Do you understand this, Jasper ?"--the smiling Mabel half-whispered to the young man, who still kept his own canoe so near as to be close at her side.

"There is not so much difference between salt and fresh water, that we who pass our time on them cannot comprehend each other. It is no great merit, Mabel, to understand the language of our trade."

"Even religion," continued Cap, "isn't moored in exactly the same place it was in my young days. They veer and haul upon it ashore, as they do on all other things, and it is no wonder if now and then they get jammed. Everything seems to change but the compass, and even that has its variations." "Well," returned the Pathfinder, "I thought Christianity and the compass both pretty stationary."

Religion at sea

"So they are, afloat, bating the variations. is just the same thing to-day that it was when I first put my hand into the tar-bucket. No one will dispute it who has the fear of God before his eyes. I can see no difference between the state of religion on board ship now, and what it was when I was a younker. But it is not so ashore, by any means. Take my word for it, Master Pathfinder, it is a difficult thing to find a man—I mean a landsman—who views these matters to-day, exactly as he looked at them forty years ago."

"And yet God is unchanged--his works are unchanged-his

holy word is unchanged, and all that ought to bless and honor his name, should be unchanged too!"

"Not ashore. That is the worst of the land; it is all the while in motion, I tell you, though it looks so solid. If you plant a tree, and leave it, on your return from a three years' v'y'ge, you don't find it at all the sort of thing you left it. The towns grow, and new streets spring up; the wharves are altered; and the whole face of the earth undergoes change. Now a ship comes back from an India v'y'ge just the thing she sailed, bating the want of paint, wear and tear, and the accidents of the sea.

That is too true, Master Cap, and more's the pity. Ah's me-the things they call improvements and betterments, are undermining and defacing the land! The glorious works of God are daily cut down and destroyed, and the hand of man seems to be upraised in contempt of his mighty will. They tell me there are fearful signs of what we may all come to, to be met with west and south of the great lakes, though I have never yet visited that region !"

"What do you mean, Pathfinder ?" modestly inquired Jasper.

"I mean the spots marked by the vengeance of heaven, or which, perhaps, have been raised up as solemn warnings to the thoughtless and wasteful, hereaways. They call them prairies; and I have heard as honest Delawares as I ever knew, declare that the finger of God has been laid so heavily on them, that they are altogether without trees. This is an awful visitation to befall innocent 'arth, and can only mean to show to what frightful consequences a heedless desire to destroy may lead."

"And yet I have seen settlers who have much fancied these open spots, because they saved them the toil of clearing. You relish your bread, Pathfinder, and yet wheat will not ripen in the shade."

"But honesty will, and simple wishes, and a love of God, Jasper. Even Master Cap will tell you a treeless plain must resemble a desert island."

"Why that as it may be," put in Cap. "Desert islands, too, have their uses, for they serve to correct the reckonings by. If my taste is consulted, I should never quarrel with a plain for wanting trees. As nature has given a man eyes to look about with, and a sun to shine, were it not for ship-building, and now and then a house, I can see no great use in a tree; especially one that don't bear monkeys or fruit."

To this remark the guide made no answer, beyond a low sound, intended to enjoin silence on his companions. While the desultory conversation just related had been carried on in subdued voices, the canoes were dropping slowly down with the current, within the deep shadows of the western shore, the paddles being used merely to preserve the desired direction and proper positions. The strength of the stream varied materially, the water being seemingly still in places, while in other reaches it flowed at a rate exceeding two, or even three miles in the hour. On the rifts it even dashed forward with a velocity that was appalling to the unpractised eye. Jasper was of opinion that they might drift down with the current to the mouth of the river in two hours from the time they left the shore, and he and the Pathfinder had agreed on the expediency of suffering the canoes to float of themselves for a time, or at least until they had passed the first dangers of their new movement. The dialogue had been carried on in voices, too, guardedly low; for, though the quiet of deep solitude reigned in that vast and nearly bound. less forest, nature was speaking with her thousand tongues, in the eloquent language of night in a wilderness. The air sighed through ten thousand trees, the water rippled, and, at places, even roared along the shores; and now and then was heard the creaking of a branch, or a trunk, as it rubbed against some object similar to itself, under the vibrations of a nicely balanced body. All living sounds had ceased. Once, it is true, the Pathfinder fancied he heard the howl of a distant wolf, of which a few prowled through these woods; but it was a transient and doubtful cry, that might possibly have been attributed to the imagination. When he desired his companions, however, to

cease talking, in the manner just mentioned, his vigilant ear had caught the peculiar sound that is made by the parting of a dried branch of a tree, and which, if his senses did not deceive him, came from the western shore. All who are accustomed to that particular sound, will understand how readily the ear receives it, and how easy it is to distinguish the tread which breaks the branch from every other noise of the forest.

"There is the footstep of a man on the bank," said Pathfinder to Jasper, speaking in neither a whisper nor yet in a voice loud enough to be heard at any distance. "Can the accursed Iroquois have crossed the river, already, with their arms, and without a boat ?"

"It may be the Delaware! He would follow us of course down this bank, and would know where to look for us. Let me draw closer in to the shore, and reconnoitre."

"Go, boy, but be light with the paddle, and on no account ventur' ashore on an onsartainty.”

"Is this prudent?" demanded Mabel, with an impetuosity that rendered her incautious in modulating her sweet voice.

66

Very imprudent, if you speak so loud, fair one.

I like your

voice, which is soft and pleasing, after listening so long to the tones of men; but it must not be heard too much, or too freely, just now. Your father, the honest serjeant, will tell you, when you meet him, that silence is a double virtue on a trail. Jasper, and do justice to your own character for prudence."

Go,

Ten anxious minutes succeeded the disappearance of the canoe of Jasper, which glided away from that of the Pathfinder so noiselessly that it had been swallowed up in the gloom before Mabel allowed herself to believe the young man would really venture alone on a service that struck her imagination as singu larly dangerous. During this time the party continued to float with the current, no one speaking, and it might almost be said no one breathing, so strong was the general desire to catch the mninutest sound that should come from the shore. But the same solemn, we might indeed say sublime, quiet reigned as before; the washing of the water, as it piled up against some slight obstruc

tion, and the sighing of the trees, alone interrupting the slumbers of the forest. At the end of the period mentioned the snapping of dried branches was again faintly heard, and the Pathfinder fancied that the sound of smothered voices reached him.

"I may be mistaken," he said, "for the thoughts often fancy what the heart wishes; but them were notes like the low tones of the Delaware!"

"Do the dead of the savages ever walk?" demanded Cap.

"Ay, and run, too, in their happy hunting-grounds, but nowhere else. A red-skin finishes with the 'arth after the breath quits the body. It is not one of his gifts to linger around his wigwam when his hour has passed."

"I see some object on the water," whispered Mabel, whose eye had not ceased to dwell on the body of gloom with close intensity since the disappearance of Jasper.

"It is the canoe!" returned the guide, greatly relieved. “All must be safe, or we should have heard from the lad."

In another minute the two canoes, which became visible to those they carried only as they drew near each other, again floated side by side, and the form of Jasper was recognised at the stern of his own boat. The figure of a second man was seated in the bow, and as the young sailor so wielded his paddle as to bring the face of his companion near the eyes of the Pathfinder and Mabel, they both recognised the person of the Delaware.

"Chingachgook-my brother !" said the guide, in the dialect. of the other's people, a tremor shaking his voice that betrayed the strength of his feelings.-"Chief of the Mohicans! my heart is very glad. Often have we passed through blood and strife. together, but I was afraid it was never to be so again."

"Hugh!-Mingos-Squaws!-Three of their scalps hang at my girdle. They do not know how to strike the Great Serpent of the Delawares. Their hearts have no blood, and their thoughts are on their return path, across the waters of the Great Lake."