;
and as for a Mingo, I look upon him as man looks on a snake, a creatur'
to be put beneath the heel whenever a fitting occasion offers."

"Well, well; I have mistaken your calling, which I had thought
as regularly warlike as that of a ship's gunner. There is my
brother-in-law, now; he has been a soldier since he was sixteen, and he
looks upon his trade as every way as respectable as that of a seafaring
man, a point I hardly think it worth while to dispute with him."

"My father has been taught to believe that it is honorable to carry
arms," said Mabel, "for his father was a soldier before him."

"Yes, yes," resumed the guide; "most of the Sergeant's gifts are
martial, and he looks at most things in this world over the barrel of
his musket. One of his notions, now, is to prefer a king's piece to a
regular, double-sighted, long-barrelled rifle. Such conceits will come
over men from long habit; and prejudice is, perhaps, the commonest
failing of human natur'."

While the desultory conversation just related had been carried on in
subdued voices, the canoes were dropping slowly down with the current
within the deep shadows of the western shore, the paddles being used
merely to preserve the desired direction and proper positions. The
strength of the stream varied materially, the water being seemingly
still in places, while in other reaches it flowed at a rate exceeding
two or even three miles in the hour. On the rifts it even dashed forward
with a velocity that was appalling to the unpractised eye. Jasper was of
opinion that they might drift down with the current to the mouth of the
river in two hours from the time they left the shore, and he and the
Pathfinder had agreed on the expediency of suffering the canoes to float
of themselves for a time, or at least until they had passed the first
dangers of their new movement. The dialogue had been carried on in
voices, too, guardedly low; for though the quiet of deep solitude
reigned in that vast and nearly boundless forest, nature was speaking
with her thousand tongues in the eloquent language of night in a
wilderness. The air sighed through ten thousand trees, the water
rippled, and at places even roared along the shores; and now and then
was heard the creaking of a branch or a trunk, as it rubbed against
some object similar to itself, under the vibrations of a nicely balanced
body. All living sounds had ceased. Once, it is true, the Pathfinder
fancied he heard the howl of