nkly as it was given, but much more sweetly.

"That he wouldn't; the Sergeant is a man of feeling, and many is the
march and the fight that we have had--stood shoulder to shoulder in,
as _he_ would call it--though I always keep my limbs free when near a
Frencher or a Mingo."

"You are, then, the young friend of whom my father has spoken so often
in his letters?"

"His _young_ friend--the Sergeant has the advantage of me by thirty
years; yes, he is thirty years my senior, and as many my better."

"Not in the eyes of the daughter, perhaps, friend Pathfinder;" put in
Cap, whose spirits began to revive when he found the water once more
flowing around him. "The thirty years that you mention are not often
thought to be an advantage in the eyes of girls of nineteen."

Mabel colored; and, in turning aside her face to avoid the looks of
those in the bow of the canoe, she encountered the admiring gaze of the
young man in the stern. As a last resource, her spirited but soft blue
eyes sought refuge in the water. Just at this moment a dull, heavy sound
swept up the avenue formed by the trees, borne along by a light air that
hardly produced a ripple on the water.

"That sounds pleasantly," said Cap, pricking up his ears like a dog that
hears a distant baying; "it is the surf on the shores of your lake, I
suppose?"

"Not so--not so," answered the Pathfinder; "it is merely this river
tumbling over some rocks half a mile below us."

"Is there a fall in the stream?" demanded Mabel, a still brighter flush
glowing in her face.

"The devil! Master Pathfinder, or you, Mr. Eau-douce" (for so Cap began
to style Jasper), "had you not better give the canoe a sheer, and get
nearer to the shore? These waterfalls have generally rapids above them,
and one might as well get into the Maelstrom at once as to run into
their suction."

"Trust to us, friend Cap," answered Pathfinder; "we are but fresh-water
sailors, it is true, and I cannot boast of being much even of that; but
we understand rifts and rapids and cataracts; and in going down these we
shall do our endeavors not to disgrace our edication."

"In going down!" exclaimed Cap. "The devil, man! you do not dream of
going down a waterfall in this egg shell of bark!"

"Sartain; the path lies over the falls, and it is much easier to shoot
them than to unload the canoe and to carry that and all it contains
around a portage of a mile by hand."

Mabel turned her pallid countenance towards