Mabel looked from one of her protectors to the other, and her fine eyes swam in tears.  Frankly placing a hand in that of each, she answered them, though at first her voice was choked, “I have no right to expose you on my account.  My dear father will thank you, I thank you, God will reward you; but let there be no unnecessary risk.  I can walk far, and have often gone miles on some girlish fancy; why not now exert myself for my life? —­ nay, for your precious lives?”

“She is a true dove, Jasper” said the Pathfinder, neither relinquishing the hand he held until the girl herself, in native modesty, saw fit to withdraw it, “and wonderfully winning!  We get to be rough, and sometimes even hard-hearted, in the woods, Mabel; but the sight of one like you brings us back again to our young feelings, and does us good for the remainder of our days.  I daresay Jasper here will tell you the same; for, like me in the forest, the lad sees but few such as yourself on Ontario, to soften his heart and remind him of love for his kind.  Speak out now, Jasper, and say if it is not so?”

“I question if many like Mabel Dunham are to be found anywhere,” returned the young man gallantly, an honest sincerity glowing in his face that spoke more eloquently than his tongue; “you need not mention the woods and lakes to challenge her equals, but I would go into settlements and towns.”

“We had better leave the canoes,” Mabel hurriedly rejoined; “for I feel it is no longer safe to be here.”

“You can never do it; you can never do it.  It would be a march of more than twenty miles, and that, too, of tramping over brush and roots, and through swamps, in the dark; the trail of such a party would be wide, and we might have to fight our way into the garrison after all.  We will wait for the Mohican.”

Such appearing to be the decision of him to whom all, in their present strait, looked up for counsel, no more was said on the subject.  The whole party now broke up into groups:  Arrowhead and his wife sitting apart under the bushes, conversing in a low tone, though the man spoke sternly, and the woman answered with the subdued mildness that marks the degraded condition of a savage’s wife.  Pathfinder and Cap occupied one canoe, chatting of their different adventures by sea and land; while Jasper and Mabel sat in the other, making greater progress in intimacy in a single hour than might have been effected under other circumstances in a twelvemonth.  Notwithstanding their situation as regards the enemy, the time flew by swiftly, and the young people, in particular, were astonished when Cap informed them how long they had been thus occupied.

“If one could smoke, Master Pathfinder,” observed the old sailor, “this berth would be snug enough; for, to give the devil his due, you have got the canoes handsomely landlocked, and into moorings that would defy a monsoon.  The only hardship is the denial of the pipe.”