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Mingos, asleep in the woods, with their guns and horns piled in a way that enabled me to get possession of them without waking a miscreant of them all. What an opportunity that would have been for the Sarpent, who would have dispatched them, one after another, with his knife, and had their six scalps at his girdle in about the time it takes me to tell you the story. Oh, he's a valiant warrior, that Chingachgook, and as honest as he's brave, and as good as he 's honest!"

"And what may you have done in this matter, Master Pathfinder?" demanded Cap, who began to be interested in the result; "it seems to me you had made either a very lucky or a very unlucky landfall.”

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""T was lucky, and 't was unlucky, if you can understand that. 'Twas unlucky, for it proved a desperate trial; and yet 't was lucky, all things considered, in the ind. I did not touch a hair of their heads, for a white man has no nat' ral gifts to take scalps; nor did I even make sure of one of their rifles. I distrusted myself, knowing that a Mingo is no favorite in my own eyes.” "As for the scalps, I think you were right enough, my worthy friend; but as for the armament and the stores, they would have been condemned by any prize-court in Christendom! "

"That they would that they would; but then the Mingos would have gone clear, seeing that a white man can no more attack an unarmed than a sleeping inimy. No, no; I did myself, and my color, and my religion, too, greater justice. I waited till their nap was over, and they well on their warpath again; and by ambushing them here, and flanking them there, I peppered the blackguards intrinsically-like"-Pathfinder occasionally caught a fine word from his associates, and used it a little vaguely "so that only one ever got back to his village; and he came into his wigwam, limping. Luckily, as it turned out, the great Delaware had only halted to jerk some venison, and was following on my trail; and when he got up, he had five of the scoundrel's scalps hanging where they ought to be; so you see nothing was lost

by doing right, either in the way of honor or in that of profit."

Cap grunted an assent, though the distinctions in his companion's morality, it must be owned, were not exactly clear to his understanding. The two had occasionally moved towards the block as they conversed, and then stopped again, as some matter of more interest than common brought them to a halt. They were now so near the building, however, that neither thought of pursuing the subject any further; but each prepared himself for the final scene with Sergeant Dunham.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Thou barraine ground, whom winter's wrath hath wasted,
Art made a mirror to behold my plight:

Whilome thy fresh spring flower'd; and after hasted
Thy summer proude, with daffodillies dight;
And now is come thy winter's stormy state,

Thy mantle mar'd wherein thou maskedst late.

SPENSER: The Shepherd's Calendar.

ALTHOUGH the soldier may regard danger, and even death, with indifference, in the tumult of battle, when the passage of the soul is delayed to moments of tranquillity and reflection, the change commonly brings with it the usual train of solemn reflections; of regrets for the past; and of doubts and anticipations for the future. Many a man has died with an heroic expression on his lips, but with heaviness and distrust at his heart; for, whatever may be the varieties of our religious creeds let us depend on the mediation of Christ, the dogmas of Mohammed, or the elaborated allegories of the Eastthere is a conviction, common to all men, that death is but the stepping-stone between this and a more elevated state of being. Sergeant Dunham was a brave man; but he was departing for a country in which resolution could avail him nothing: and as he felt himself gradually loosened from the grasp of the world, his thoughts and feelings took the natural direction; for, if it be true that

death is the great leveler, in nothing is it more true, than that it reduces all to the same views of the vanity of life.

Pathfinder, though a man of quaint and peculiar habits and opinions, was always thoughtful, and disposed to view the things around him with a shade of philosophy, as well as with seriousness. In him therefore the scene in the block-house awakened no very novel feelings, but the case was different with Cap. Rude, opinionated, dogmatical, and boisterous, the old sailor was little accustomed to view even death with any approach to the gravity that its importance demands; and, notwithstanding all that had passed, and his real regard for his brother-in-law, he now entered the room of the dying man with much of that callous unconcern which was the fruit of long training in a school that, while it gives so many lessons in the sublimest truths, generally wastes its admonitions on scholars who are little disposed to profit by them.

The first proof that Cap gave of his not entering as fully as those around him into the solemnity of the moment, was by commencing a narration of the events which had just led to the deaths of Muir and Arrowhead. "Both tripped their anchors in a hurry, brother Dunham," he concluded; "and you have the consolation of knowing that others have gone before you in the great journey, and they, too, men whom you've no particular reason to love; which to me, were I placed in your situation, would be a source of very great satisfaction. My mother always said, Master Pathfinder, that dying people's spirits should not be damped, but that they ought to be encouraged by all proper and prudent means; and this news will give the poor fellow a great lift if he feels towards the savages any way as I feel myself."

June arose at this intelligence, and stole from the block-house with a noiseless step. Dunham listened with a vacant stare, for life had already lost so many of its ties that he had really forgotten Arrowhead, and cared nothing for Muir; but he inquired in a feeble voice for Eau-douce. The young man was immediately summoned,

and soon made his appearance. The sergeant gazed at him kindly, and the expression of his eyes was that of regret for the injury he had done him in thought. The party in the block-house now consisted of Pathfinder, Cap, Mabel, Jasper, and the dying man. With the exception of the daughter, all stood around the sergeant's pallet in attendance on his last moments. Mabel kneeled at his side, now pressing a clammy hand to her head, now applying moisture to the parched lips of her father.

"Your case will shortly be our'n, sergeant," said Pathfinder, who could hardly be said to be awe-struck by the scene, for he had witnessed the approach and victories of death too often for that; but who felt the full difference between his triumphs in the excitement of battle and in the quiet of the domestic circle; “and I make no question we shall meet agin hereafter. Arrowhead has gone his way, 't is true; but it can never be the way of a just India.. You've seen the last of him: for his path cannot be the path of the just. Reason is agin the thought, in his case, as it is also in my judgment agin it, too, in the case of Lieutenant Muir. You have done your duty in life; and when a man does that, he may start on the longest journey with a light heart and an actyve foot."

"I hope so, my friend; I've tried to do my duty."

"Aye, aye," put in Cap, "intention is half the battle; and though you would have done better had you hove to in the offing and sent a craft in to feel how the land lay, things might have turned out differently; no one here doubts that you meant all for the best, and no one anywhere else I should think, from what I've seen of this world and read of t' other."

"I did; yes, I meant all for the best."

"Father! Oh, my beloved father!

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Magnet is taken aback by this blow, Master Pathfinder, and can say or do but little to carry her father over the shoals; so we must try all the harder to serve him a friendly turn ourselves."

"Did you speak, Mabel?" Dunham asked, turning his

eyes in the direction of his daughter, for he was already too feeble to turn his body.

"Yes, father; rely on nothing you have done yourself, for mercy and salvation; trust altogether in the blessed mediation of the Son of God!"

"The chaplain has told us something like this, brother; the dear child may be right."

"Aye, aye; that's doctrine out of question. He will be our Judge, and keeps the log-book of our acts, and will foot them all up at the last day, and then say who has done well and who has done ill. I do believe Mabel is right, but then you need not be concerned, as no doubt the account has been fairly kept."

"Uncle! dearest father! This is a vain illusion. Oh, place all your trust in the mediation of our holy Redeemer! Have you not often felt your own insufficiency to effect your own wishes in the commonest things, and how can you imagine yourself, by your own acts, equal to raise up a frail and sinful nature sufficiently to be received into the presence of perfect purity? There is no hope for any, but in the mediation of Christ!"

"This is what the Moravians used to tell us," said Pathfinder to Cap in a low voice; "Mabel is right."

"Right enough, friend Pathfinder, in the distances, but wrong in the course. I'm afraid the child will get the sergeant adrift, at the very moment when we had him in the best of the water, and in the plainest part of the channel."

"Leave it to Mabel — leave it to Mabel; she knows better than any of us, and can do no harm."

"I have heard this before," Dunham at length replied. "Ah! Mabel; it is strange for the parent to lean on the child at a moment like this."

"Put your trust in God, father; lean on his holy and compassionate Son. Pray, dearest, dearest father; pray for his omnipotent support."

"I am not used to prayer; brother - Pathfinder Jasper, can you help me to words?"

Cap scarce knew what prayer meant, and he had no

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