“I’ll shake your hand, Captain, I will; for you’re a lawful and nat’ral inimy,” returned Pathfinder, “and a manful one; but the body of the Quartermaster shall never disgrace English ground.  I did intend to carry it back to Lundie that he might play his bagpipes over it, but now it shall lie here on the spot where he acted his villainy, and have his own treason for a headstone.  Captain Flinty-heart, I suppose this consorting with traitors is a part of a soldier’s regular business; but, I tell you honestly, it is not to my liking, and I’d rather it should be you than I who had this affair on his conscience.  What an awful sinner!  To plot, right and left, ag’in country, friends, and the Lord!  Jasper, boy, a word with you aside, for a single minute.”

Pathfinder now led the young man apart; and, squeezing his hand, with the tears in his own eyes, he continued: 

“You know me, Eau-douce, and I know you,” said he, “and this news has not changed my opinion of you in any manner.  I never believed their tales, though it looked solemn at one minute, I will own; yes, it did look solemn, and it made me feel solemn too.  I never suspected you for a minute, for I know your gifts don’t lie that-a-way; but, I must own, I didn’t suspect the Quartermaster neither.”

“And he holding his Majesty’s commission, Pathfinder!”

“It isn’t so much that, Jasper Western, it isn’t so much that.  He held a commission from God to act right, and to deal fairly with his fellow-creaturs, and he has failed awfully in his duty.”

“To think of his pretending love for one like Mabel, too, when he felt none.”

“That was bad, sartainly; the fellow must have had Mingo blood in his veins.  The man that deals unfairly by a woman can be but a mongrel, lad; for the Lord has made them helpless on purpose that we may gain their love by kindness and sarvices.  Here is the Sergeant, poor man, on his dying bed; he has given me his daughter for a wife, and Mabel, dear girl, she has consented to it; and it makes me feel that I have two welfares to look after, two natur’s to care for, and two hearts to gladden.  Ah’s me, Jasper!  I sometimes feel that I’m not good enough for that sweet child!”

Eau-douce had nearly gasped for breath when he first heard this intelligence; and, though he succeeded in suppressing any other outward signs of agitation, his cheek was blanched nearly to the paleness of death.  Still he found means to answer not only with firmness, but with energy, —­

“Say not so, Pathfinder; you are good enough for a queen.”

“Ay, ay, boy, according to your idees of my goodness; that is to say, I can kill a deer, or even a Mingo at need, with any man on the lines; or I can follow a forest-path with as true an eye, or read the stars, when others do not understand them.  No doubt, no doubt, Mabel will have venison enough, and fish enough, and pigeons enough; but will she have knowledge enough, and will she have idees enough, and pleasant conversation enough, when life comes to drag a little, and each of us begins to pass for our true value?”