“Pooh, pooh, Magnet!  You are just fit to read lectures about ships before some hysterical society; you don’t know what you are talking about; leave these things to me, and they’ll be properly managed.  Ah!  Here is the Pathfinder himself, and I may just as well drop him a hint of my benevolent intentions as regards himself.  Hope is a great encourager of our exertions.”

Cap nodded his head, and then ceased to speak, while the hunter approached, not with his usual frank and easy manner, but in a way to show that he was slightly embarrassed, if not distrustful of his reception.

“Uncle and niece make a family party,” said Pathfinder, when near the two, “and a stranger may not prove a welcome companion?”

“You are no stranger, Master Pathfinder,” returned Cap, “and no one can be more welcome than yourself.  We were talking of you but a moment ago, and when friends speak of an absent man, he can guess what they have said.”

“I ask no secrets.  Every man has his enemies, and I have mine, though I count neither you, Master Cap, nor pretty Mabel here among the number.  As for the Mingos, I will say nothing, though they have no just cause to hate me.”

“That I’ll answer for, Pathfinder! for you strike my fancy as being well-disposed and upright.  There is a method, however, of getting away from the enmity of even these Mingos; and if you choose to take it, no one will more willingly point it out than myself, without a charge for my advice either.”

“I wish no enemies, Saltwater,” for so the Pathfinder had begun to call Cap, having, insensibly to himself, adopted the term, by translating the name given him by the Indians in and about the fort, —­ “I wish no enemies.  I’m as ready to bury the hatchet with the Mingos as with the French, though you know that it depends on One greater than either of us so to turn the heart as to leave a man without enemies.”

“By lifting your anchor, and accompanying me down to the coast, friend Pathfinder, when we get back from this short cruise on which we are bound, you will find yourself beyond the sound of the war-whoop, and safe enough from any Indian bullet.”

“And what should I do on the salt water?  Hunt in your towns?  Follow the trails of people going and coming from market, and ambush dogs and poultry?  You are no friend to my happiness, Master Cap, if you would lead me out of the shades of the woods to put me in the sun of the clearings.”

“I did not propose to leave you in the settlements, Pathfinder, but to carry you out to sea, where a man can only be said to breathe freely.  Mabel will tell you that such was my intention, before a word was said on the subject.”

“And what does Mabel think would come of such a change?  She knows that a man has his gifts, and that it is as useless to pretend to others as to withstand them that come from Providence.  I am a hunter, and a scout, or a guide, Saltwater, and it is not in me to fly so much in the face of Heaven as to try to become anything else.  Am I right, Mabel, or are you so much a woman as to wish to see a natur’ altered?”