should you forest."

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live to be as old as one of the trees in this

Nay, nay," interrupted the single-hearted and generous guide, Jasper wants not for friends in this region, I can assure you; and though seeing the world, according to his habits, may do him good as well as another, we shall think none the worse of him if he never quits us. Eau-douce or Eau-de-vie, he is a brave, true-hearted youth, and I always sleep as sound when he is on the watch as if I was up and stirring myself; aye, and for that matter, sounder too. The sergeant's daughter, here, doesn't believe it necessary for the lad to go to sea in order to make a man of him, or one who is worthy to be respected and esteemed."

Mabel made no reply to this appeal, and she even looked towards the western shore, although the darkness rendered the natural movement unnecessary to conceal her face. But Jasper felt that there was a necessity for his saying something; the pride of youth and manhood revolting at the idea of his being in a condition not to command the respect of his fellows, or the smiles of his equals of the other sex. Still he was unwilling to utter aught that might be considered harsh, to the uncle of Mabel; and his self-command was, perhaps, more creditable than his modesty and spirit.

"I pretend not to things I don't possess," he said, "and lay no claim to any knowledge of the ocean, or of navigation. We steer by the stars and the compass on these lakes, running from headland to headland, and, having little need of figures and calculations, make no use of them. But we have our claims, notwithstanding, as I have often heard from those who have passed years on the ocean. In the first place we have always the land aboard, and much of the time on a lee-shore, and that I have frequently heard makes hardy sailors. Our gales are sudden and severe, and we are compelled to run for our ports at all hours"

"You have your leads," interrupted Cap.

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They are of little use, and are seldom cast."

"The deep seas"

"I have heard of such things, but confess I never saw one."

"Oh-the-Deuce, with a vengeance. A trader, and no deep sea! Why, boy, you cannot pretend to be anything of a mariner. Who the devil ever heard of a seaman without his deep sea?"

"I do not pretend to any particular skill, Master Cap"

Except in shooting falls, Jasper-except in shooting falls and rifts," said Pathfinder, coming to the rescue; "in which business even you, Master Cap, must allow he has some handiness. In my judgment, every man is to be esteemed or condemned according to his gifts; and if Master Cap is useless in running the Oswego Falls, I try to remember that he is useful when out of sight of land; and if Jasper be useless when out of sight of land, I do not forget that he has a true eye and steady hand when running the falls."

"But Jasper is not useless - would not be useless when out of sight of land," said Mabel, with a spirit and energy that caused her clear sweet voice to be startling amid the solemn stillness of that extraordinary scene. "No one can be useless there who can do as much here, is what I mean; though I dare say he is not as well acquainted with ships as uncle."

my

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Aye, bolster each other up in your ignorance," returned Cap, with a sneer; 66 we seamen are so much outnumbered when ashore that it is seldom we get our dues; but when you want to be defended, or trade is to be carried on, there is outcry enough for us."

"But, uncle, landsmen do not come to attack our coasts; so that seamen only meet seamen."

"So much for ignorance! Where are all the enemies that have landed in this country, French and English; let me inquire, niece?"

"Sure enough, where are they!" ejaculated Pathfinder. "None can tell better than we who dwell in the woods, Master Cap. I have often followed their line of march by bones bleaching in the rain, and have found their trail by graves, years after they and their pride had vanished together. Ginirals and privates, they lay scattered throughout the

land, so many proofs of what men are when led on by their love of great names, and the wish to be more than their fellows."

"I must say, Master Pathfinder, that you sometimes utter opinions that are a little remarkable, for a man who lives by the rifle; seldom snuffing the air but he smells gunpowder, or turning out of his berth but to bear down on an enemy.”

"If you think I pass my days in warfare against my kind, you know neither me nor my history. The man that lives in the woods, and on the frontiers, must take the chances of the things among which he dwells. For this I am not accountable, being but an humble and powerless hunter, and scout, and guide. My real calling is to hunt for the army on its marches, and in times of peace; although I am more especially engaged in the service of one officer, who is now absent in the settlements, where I never follow him. no; bloodshed and warfare are not my real gifts, but peace and marcy. Still, I must face the enemy as well as another, and as for a Mingo, I look upon him as man looks on a snake a creatur' to be put beneath the heel, whenever a fitting occasion offers."

No,

"Well, well; I have mistaken your calling, which I had thought as regularly warlike as that of a ship's gunner. There is my brother-in-law, now; he has been a soldier since he was sixteen, and he looks upon his trade as every way as respectable as that of a seafaring man, which is a point I hardly think it worth while to dispute with him."

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My father has been taught to believe that it is honorable to carry arms," said Mabel, "for his father was a soldier before him."

"Yes, yes," resumed the guide, "most of the sergeant's gifts are martial, and he looks at most things in this world over the barrel of his musket. One of his notions now, is to prefar a king's piece to a regular double-sighted, longbarreled 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 wear 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.”

"So they are, afloat, bating the variations.

Religion at sea 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 PATHFINDER.

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, here-aways. 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 shipbuilding, 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

HIGAN