“Tut, tut, Pathfinder!  You don’t know yourself, man, and may put all faith in my judgment.  In the first place you have experience; and, as all girls must want that, no prudent young woman would overlook such a qualification.  Then you are not one of the coxcombs that strut about when they first join a regiment; but a man who has seen service, and who carries the marks of it on his person and countenance.  I daresay you have been under fire some thirty or forty times, counting all the skirmishes and ambushes that you’ve seen.”

“All of that, Sergeant, all of that; but what will it avail in gaining the good-will of a tender-hearted young female?”

“It will gain the day.  Experience in the field is as good in love as in war.  But you are as honest-hearted and as loyal a subject as the king can boast of —­ God bless him!”

“That may be too; but I’m afeared I’m too rude and too old and too wild like to suit the fancy of such a young and delicate girl as Mabel, who has been unused to our wilderness ways, and may think the settlements better suited to her gifts and inclinations.”

“These are new misgivings for you, my friend; and I wonder they were never paraded before.”

“Because I never knew my own worthlessness, perhaps, until I saw Mabel.  I have travelled with some as fair, and have guided them through the forest, and seen them in their perils and in their gladness; but they were always too much above me to make me think of them as more than so many feeble ones I was bound to protect and defend.  The case is now different.  Mabel and I are so nearly alike, that I feel weighed down with a load that is hard to bear, at finding us so unlike.  I do wish, Sergeant, that I was ten years younger, more comely to look at, and better suited to please a handsome young woman’s fancy.”

“Cheer up, my brave friend, and trust to a father’s knowledge of womankind.  Mabel half loves you already, and a fortnight’s intercourse and kindness, down among the islands yonder will close ranks with the other half.  The girl as much as told me this herself last night.”

“Can this be so, Sergeant?” said the guide, whose meek and modest nature shrank from viewing himself in colors so favorable.  “Can this be truly so?  I am but a poor hunter and Mabel, I see, is fit to be an officer’s lady.  Do you think the girl will consent to quit all her beloved settlement usages, and her visitings and church-goings, to dwell with a plain guide and hunter up hereaway in the woods?  Will she not in the end, crave her old ways, and a better man?”

“A better man, Pathfinder, would be hard to find,” returned the father.  “As for town usages, they are soon forgotten in the freedom of the forest, and Mabel has just spirit enough to dwell on a frontier.  I’ve not planned this marriage, my friend, without thinking it over, as a general does his campaign.  At first, I thought of bringing you into the regiment, that you