“Well, then, brother Cap, I hope that bit of a cold roasted pig is to your mind; you seem to fancy the food.”

“Ay, ay; give me civilized grub if I must eat,” returned the pertinacious seaman.  “Venison is well enough for your inland sailors, but we of the ocean like a little of that which we understand.”

Here Pathfinder laid down his knife and fork, and indulged in a hearty laugh, though in his always silent manner; then he asked, with a little curiosity in his manner, —­

“Don’t, you miss the skin, Master Cap? don’t you miss the skin?”

“It would have been better for its jacket, I think myself, Pathfinder; but I suppose it is a fashion of the woods to serve up shoats in this style.”

“Well, well, a man may go round the ’arth and not know everything.  If you had had the skinning of that pig, Master Cap, it would have left you sore hands.  The cratur’ is a hedgehog!”

“Blast me, if I thought it wholesome natural pork either!” returned Cap.  “But then I believed even a pig might lose some of its good qualities up hereaway in the woods.”

“If the skinning of it, brother, does not fall to my duty.  Pathfinder, I hope you didn’t find Mabel disobedient on the march?”

“Not she, not she.  If Mabel is only half as well satisfied with Jasper and Pathfinder as the Pathfinder and Jasper are satisfied with her, Sergeant, we shall be friends for the remainder of our days.”

As the guide spoke, he turned his eyes towards the blushing girl, with a sort of innocent desire to know her opinion; and then, with an inborn delicacy, which proved he was far superior to the vulgar desire to invade the sanctity of feminine feeling, he looked at his plate, and seemed to regret his own boldness.

“Well, well, we must remember that women are not men, my friend,” resumed the Sergeant, “and make proper allowances for nature and education.  A recruit is not a veteran.  Any man knows that it takes longer to make a good soldier than it takes to make anything else.”

“This is new doctrine, Sergeant,” said Cap with some spirit.  “We old seamen are apt to think that six soldiers, ay, and capital soldiers too, might be made while one sailor is getting his education.”

“Ay, brother Cap, I’ve seen something of the opinions which seafaring men have of themselves,” returned the brother-in-law, with a smile as bland as comported with his saturnine features; “for I was many years one of the garrison in a seaport.  You and I have conversed on the subject before and I’m afraid we shall never agree.  But if you wish to know what the difference is between a real soldier and man in what I should call a state of nature, you have only to look at a battalion of the 55th on parade this afternoon, and then, when you get back to York, examine one of the militia regiments making its greatest efforts.”

“Well, to my eye, Sergeant, there is very little difference, not more than you’ll find between a brig and a snow.  To me they seem alike:  all scarlet, and feathers, and powder, and pipeclay.”