“Then the lad has a manner of letting his thoughts be known, that I fear I can never equal.  If there’s anything on ’arth that would make my tongue bold and persuading, Mabel, I do think it’s yourself; and yet in our late conversations Jasper has outdone me, even on this point, in a way to make me ashamed of myself.  He has told me how simple you were, and how true-hearted, and kind-hearted; and how you looked down upon vanities, for though you might be the wife of more than one officer, as he thinks, that you cling to feeling, and would rather be true to yourself and natur’ than a colonel’s lady.  He fairly made my blood warm, he did, when he spoke of your having beauty without seeming ever to have looked upon it, and the manner in which you moved about like a young fa’n, so nat’ral and graceful like, without knowing it; and the truth and justice of your idees, and the warmth and generosity of your heart —­ "

“Jasper!” interrupted Mabel, giving way to feelings that had gathered an ungovernable force by being so long pent, and falling into the young man’s willing arms, weeping like a child, and almost as helpless.  “Jasper!  Jasper!  Why have you kept this from me?”

The answer of Eau-douce was not very intelligible, nor was the murmured dialogue that followed remarkable for coherency.  But the language of affection is easily understood.  The hour that succeeded passed like a very few minutes of ordinary life, so far as a computation of time was concerned; and when Mabel recollected herself, and bethought her of the existence of others, her uncle was pacing the cutter’s deck in great impatience, and wondering why Jasper should be losing so much of a favorable wind.  Her first thought was of him, who was so likely to feel the recent betrayal of her real emotions.

“Oh, Jasper,” she exclaimed, like one suddenly self-convicted, “the Pathfinder!”

Eau-douce fairly trembled, not with unmanly apprehension, but with the painful conviction of the pang he had given his friend; and he looked in all directions in the expectation of seeing his person.  But Pathfinder had withdrawn, with a tact and a delicacy that might have done credit to the sensibility and breeding of a courtier.  For several minutes the two lovers sat, silently waiting his return, uncertain what propriety required of them under circumstances so marked and so peculiar.  At length they beheld their friend advancing slowly towards them, with a thoughtful and even pensive air.

“I now understand what you meant, Jasper, by speaking without a tongue and hearing without an ear,” he said when close enough to the tree to be heard.  “Yes, I understand it now, I do; and a very pleasant sort of discourse it is, when one can hold it with Mabel Dunham.  Ah’s me!  I told the Sergeant I wasn’t fit for her; that I was too old, too ignorant, and too wild like; but he would have it otherwise.”