Chapter 7 - Page 2

think; for, though only a girl from the towns, and, like most
of that class, a little disposed to see danger where there is none,
I promise you, Jasper, no foolish fears of mine shall stand in the
way of your doing your duty."

"The Sergeant's daughter is right, and she is worthy of being honest
Thomas Dunham's child," put in the Pathfinder. "Ah's me, pretty
one! many is the time that your father and I have scouted and
marched together on the flanks and rear of the enemy, in nights
darker than this, and that, too, when we did not know but the next
moment would lead us into a bloody ambushment. I was at his side
when he got the wound in his shoulder; and the honest fellow will
tell you, when you meet, the manner in which we contrived to cross
the river which lay in our rear, in order to save his scalp."

"He has told me," said Mabel, with more energy perhaps than her
situation rendered prudent. "I have his letters, in which he has
mentioned all that, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart
for the service. God will remember it, Pathfinder; and there is
no gratitude that you can ask of the daughter which she will not
cheerfully repay for her father's life."

"Ay, that is the way with all your gentle and pure-hearted creatures.
I have seen some of you before, and have heard of others. The
Sergeant himself has talked to me of his own young days, and of
your mother, and of the manner in which he courted her, and of all
the crossings and disappointments, until he succeeded at last."

"My mother did not live long to repay him for what he did to win
her," said Mabel, with a trembling lip.

"So he tells me. The honest Sergeant has kept nothing back; for,
being so many years my senior, he has looked on me, in our many
scoutings together, as a sort of son."

"Perhaps, Pathfinder," observed Jasper, with a huskiness in his
voice that defeated the attempt at pleasantry, "he would be glad
to have you for one in reality."

"And if he did, Eau-douce, where would be the sin of it? He knows
what I am on a trail or a scout, and he has seen me often face to
face with the Frenchers. I have sometimes thought, lad, that we
all ought to seek for wives; for the man that lives altogether in
the woods, and in company with his enemies or his prey, gets to
lose some of the feeling of kind in the end. It is not easy to
dwell always in the presence of God and not feel the power of His
goodness. I have attended church-sarvice in the garrisons, and
tried hard, as becomes a true soldier, to join in the prayers;
for, though no enlisted sarvant of the king, I fight his battles and
sarve his cause, and so I