s have come over me."

"How's this?" interrupted the Sergeant sternly; "did I not understand
you to say that you were pleased?--and is Mabel a young woman to
disappoint expectation?"

"Ah, Sergeant, it is not Mabel that I distrust, but myself. I am but
a poor ignorant woodsman, after all; and perhaps I'm not, in truth, as
good as even you and I may think me."

"If you doubt your own judgment of yourself, Pathfinder, I beg you will
not doubt mine. Am I not accustomed to judge men's character? and am I
often deceived? Ask Major Duncan, sir, if you desire any assurances in
this particular."

"But, Sergeant, we have long been friends; have fi't side by side a
dozen times, and have done each other many services. When this is the
case, men are apt to think over kindly of each other; and I fear me that
the daughter may not be so likely to view a plain ignorant hunter as
favorably as the father does."

"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. Mab