Pathfinder viewed the matter differently.  With his habitual diffidence, he reproached himself with a neglect of duty, and that knowledge, of which the want struck him as a fault in one whose business it was to possess it, appeared a merit in the young man.  He saw nothing extraordinary in Jasper’s knowing the facts he had related; while he did feel it was unusual, not to say disgraceful, that he himself now heard of them for the first time.

“As for moccasins, Master Cap,” said he, when a short pause invited him to speak, “they may be worn by pale-faces as well as by red-skins, it is true, though they never leave the same trail on the foot of one as on the foot of the other.  Any one who is used to the woods can tell the footstep of an Indian from the footstep of a white man, whether it be made by a boot or a moccasin.  It will need better evidence than this to persuade me into the belief that Jasper is false.”

“You will allow, Pathfinder, that there are such things in the world as traitors?” put in Cap logically.

“I never knew an honest-minded Mingo, —­ one that you could put faith in, if he had a temptation to deceive you.  Cheating seems to be their gift, and I sometimes think they ought to be pitied for it, rather than persecuted.”

“Then why not believe that this Jasper may have the same weakness?  A man is a man, and human nature is sometimes but a poor concern, as I know by experience.”

This was the opening of another long and desultory conversation, in which the probability of Jasper’s guilt or innocence was argued pro and con, until both the Sergeant and his brother-in-law had nearly reasoned themselves into settled convictions in favor of the first, while their companion grew sturdier and sturdier in his defence of the accused, and still more fixed in his opinion of his being unjustly charged with treachery.  In this there was nothing out of the common course of things; for there is no more certain way of arriving at any particular notion, than by undertaking to defend it; and among the most obstinate of our opinions may be classed those which are derived from discussions in which we affect to search for truth, while in reality we are only fortifying prejudice.

By this time the Sergeant had reached a state of mind that disposed him to view every act of the young sailor with distrust, and he soon got to coincide with his relative in deeming the peculiar knowledge of Jasper, in reference to the spies, a branch of information that certainly did not come within the circle of his regular duties, as “a circumstance.”