like those you mention to see his daughter through the wilderness,” the young woman answered, returning the smile as frankly as it was given, but much more sweetly.     

       “That he wouldn't; the Sergeant is a man of feeling, and many is the march and the fight that we have had—stood shoulder to shoulder in, as he would call it—though I always keep my limbs free when near a Frencher or a Mingo.”      

       “You are, then, the young friend of whom my father has spoken so often in his letters?”      

       “His young friend—the Sergeant has the advantage of me by thirty years; yes, he is thirty years my senior, and as many my better.”      

       “Not in the eyes of the daughter, perhaps, friend Pathfinder;” put in Cap, whose spirits began to revive when he found the water once more flowing around him. “The thirty years that you mention are not often thought to be an advantage in the eyes of girls of nineteen.”      

       Mabel colored; and, in turning aside her face to avoid the looks of those in the bow of the canoe, she encountered the admiring gaze of the young       man in the stern. As a last resource, her spirited but soft blue eyes sought refuge in the water. Just at this moment a dull, heavy sound swept up the avenue formed by the trees, borne along by a light air that hardly produced a ripple on the water.     

       “That sounds pleasantly,” said Cap, pricking up his ears like a dog that hears a distant baying; “it is the surf on the shores of your lake, I suppose?”      

       “Not so—not so,” answered the Pathfinder; “it is merely this river tumbling over some rocks half a mile below us.”      

       “Is there a fall in the stream?” demanded Mabel, a still brighter flush glowing in her face.     

       “The devil! Master Pathfinder, or you, Mr. Eau-douce” (for so Cap began to style Jasper), “had you not better give the canoe a sheer, and get nearer to the shore? These waterfalls have generally rapids above them, and one might as well get into the Maelstrom at once as to run into their suction.”      

       “Trust to us, friend Cap,” answered Pathfinder; “we are but fresh-water sailors, it is true, and I cannot boast of being much even of that; but 

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