wish it, unhappy youth; that the truth may be known. I only hope that ye may escape the last punishment when a court will be sitting on your misdeeds. How is it, cap

tain, do ye or do ye not see a traitor among us?"

"Oui yes, sair. bien sûr."

"Too much lie!" said Arrowhead, in a voice of thunder, striking the breast of Muir, with the back of his own hand, in a sort of ungovernable gesture. "Where my warriors? where Yengeese scalp? Too much lie!"

Muir wanted not for personal courage, nor for a certain sense of personal honor. The violence which had been intended only for a gesture he mistook for a blow, for conscience was suddenly aroused within him, — and he stepped back a pace, extending a hand towards a gun. His face was livid with rage; and his countenance expressed the fell intention of his heart. But Arrowhead was too quick for him. With a wild glance of the eye, the Tuscarora looked about him; then thrusting a hand beneath his own girdle, drew forth a concealed knife, and, in the twinkling of an eye, buried it in the body of the quartermaster to the handle. As the latter fell at his feet, gazing into his face with the vacant stare of one surprised by death, Sanglier took a pinch of snuff, and said, in a calm voice,

"Voilà l'affaire finie! mais"-shrugging his shoulders "ce n'est qu'un scélérat de moins.” 1

The act was too sudden to be prevented, and when Arrowhead, uttering a yell, bounded into the bushes, the white men were too confounded to follow. Chingachgook, however, was more collected; and the bushes had scarcely closed on the passing body of the Tuscarora, than they were again opened by that of the Delaware in full pursuit.

Jasper Western spoke French fluently, and the words and manner of Sanglier struck him.

"Speak, Monsieur," he said, in English, "am I the

traitor?"

"Le voilà!" answered the cool Frenchman; "dat is 1 [That affair is over! but it is only one rascal the less.]

While speaking, Sanglier bent over the dead body, and thrust a hand into a pocket of the quartermaster, out of which he drew a purse. Emptying the contents on the

ground, several double-Louis rolled towards the soldiers, who were not slow in picking them up. Casting the purse from him, in contempt, the soldier of fortune turned towards the soup he had been preparing with so much care, and finding it to his liking, he began to break his fast, with an air of indifference that the most stoical Indian warrior might have envied.

CHAPTER XXVII.

The only amaranthine flower on earth

Is virtue; th' only lasting treasure, truth.

COWPER: The Task, III.

He

THE reader must imagine some of the occurrences that followed the sudden death of Muir. While his body was in the hands of his soldiers, who laid it decently aside, and covered it with a great-coat, Chingachgook silently resumed his place at the fire, and both Sanglier and Pathfinder remarked that he carried a fresh and bleeding scalp at his girdle. No one asked any questions; and the former, although perfectly satisfied that Arrowhead had fallen, manifested neither curiosity nor feeling. continued calmly eating his soup, as if the meal had been tranquil as usual. There was something of pride, and of an assumed indifference to fate, imitated from the Indians, in all this; but there was more that really resulted from practice, habitual self-command, and constitutional hardihood. With Pathfinder, the case was a little different in feeling, though much the same in appearance. He disliked Muir, whose smooth-tongued courtesy was little in accordance with his own frank and ingenuous nature; but he had been shocked at his unex1 [My faith he was a great villain—this fellow.]

pected and violent death, though accustomed to similar scenes, and he had been surprised at the exposure of his treachery. With a view to ascertain the extent of the latter, as soon as the body was removed he began to question the captain on the subject. The latter having no particular motive for secrecy, now that his agent was dead, in the course of the breakfast revealed the following circumstances, which will serve to clear up some of the minor incidents of our tale.

Soon after the 55th appeared on the frontiers, Muir had volunteered his services to the enemy. In making his offers he boasted of his intimacy with Lundie, and of the means it afforded of furnishing more accurate and important information than usual. His terms had been accepted, and Monsieur Sanglier had several interviews with him in the vicinity of the fort at Oswego, and had actually passed one entire night secreted in the garrison. Arrowhead, however, was the usual channel of communication, and the anonymous letter to Major Duncan had been originally written by Muir, transmitted to Frontenac, copied, and sent back by the Tuscarora, who was returning from that errand when captured by the Scud. It is scarcely necessary to add that Jasper was to be sacrificed in order to conceal the quartermaster's treason, and that the position of the island had been betrayed to the enemy by the latter. An extraordinary compensation, that which was found in his purse, had induced him to accompany the party under Sergeant Dunham, in order to give the signals that were to bring on the attack. The disposition of Muir towards the sex was a natural weakness, and he would have married Mabel or any one else who would accept his hand; but his admiration of her was in a great degree feigned, in order that he might have an excuse for accompanying the party, without sharing in the responsibility of its defeat, or incurring the risk of having no other strong and seemingly sufficient motive. Much of this was known to Captain Sanglier, particularly the part in connection with Mabel; and he did not fail to let his auditors into the whole secret, frequently laughing

in a sarcastic manner, as he revealed the different expe dients of the luckless quartermaster.

"Touchez-la," said the cool-blooded partisan, holding out his sinewy hand to Pathfinder, when he ended his explanations; "you be honnête, and dat is beaucoup. We tak' de spy, as we tak' la médecine, for de good; mais, je les déteste! Touchez-la."

"I'll shake your hand, captain, I will, for you're a lawful and natʼral inimy," returned Pathfinder, “and a manful one; but the body of the quartermaster shall never disgrace English ground. I did intend to carry it back to Lundie, that he might play his bagpipes over it; but now it shall lie here, on the spot where he acted his villainy, and have his own treason for a headstone. Captain Flinty-Heart, I suppose this consorting with traitors is a part of a soldier's regular business; but I tell you honestly, it is not to my liking, and I'd rather it should be you than I who had this affair on his conscience. What an awful sinner! To plot right and left agin country, friends, and the Lord! Jasper, boy, a word with you aside for a single minute."

Pathfinder now led the young man apart, and squeezing his hand, with the tears in his own eyes, he continued:

"You know me, Eau-douce, and I know you," he said, "and this news has not changed my opinion of you in any manner. I never believed their tales, though it looked solemn at one minute, I will own yes, it did look solemn; and it made me feel solemn, too. I never suspected you for a minute, for I know your gifts don't lie that-a-way; but I must own I did n't suspect the quartermaster neither."

"And he holding his majesty's commission, Pathfinder!"

"It isn't so much that, Jasper Western; it is n't so much that. He held a commission from God to act right and to deal fairly with his fellow-creatur's, and he has failed awfully in his duty!"

"To think of his pretending love for one like Mabel, too, when he felt none!"

"That was bad sartainly; the fellow must have had Mingo blood in his veins. The man that deals unfairly by a woman can be but a mongrel, lad; for the Lord has made them helpless on purpose that we may gain their love by kindness and sarvices. Here is the sergeant, poor man, on his dying bed; he has given me his daughter for a wife, and Mabel, dear girl, she has consented to it; and it makes me feel that I have two welfares to look after, two natur's to care for, and two hearts to gladden. Ah's me, Jasper! I sometimes feel that I'm not good enough for that sweet child!"

Eau-douce had nearly gasped for breath when he first heard this intelligence; and, though he succeeded in suppressing any other outward signs of agitation, his cheek was blanched nearly to the paleness of death. Still he found means to answer, not only with firmness, but with energy:

66

Say not so, Pathfinder; you are good enough for a queen.

"Aye, aye, boy, according to your ideas of my goodness; that is to say I can kill a deer, or even a Mingo at need, with any man on the lines; or I can follow a forest path with as true an eye, or read the stars, when others do not understand them. No doubt, no doubt, Mabel will have venison enough, and fish enough, and pigeons enough; but will she have knowledge enough, and will she have ideas enough, and pleasant conversation enough, when life comes to drag a little, and each of us begins to pass for our true value?"

On that

"If you pass for your value, Pathfinder, the greatest lady in the land would be happy with you. head, you have no reason to feel afraid."

"Now, Jasper, I dare to say you think so

nay,

I

know you do; for it is natʼral and according to friendship, for people to look over favorably at them they love. Yes, yes; if I had to marry you, boy, I should give myself no consarn about being well looked upon, for you have always shown a disposition to see me and all I do with friendly eyes.

But a young gal, after all, must