of my
sex love to make themselves appear."

Deception, unless it were at the expense of his enemies in the
field,--nay, concealment of even a thought,--was so little in accordance
with the Pathfinder's very nature, that he was not a little embarrassed
by this simple question. In such a strait he involuntarily took refuge
in a middle course, not revealing that which he fancied ought not to be
told, nor yet absolutely concealing it.

"You must know, Mabel," said he, "that the Sergeant and I are old
friends, and have stood side by side--or, if not actually side by side,
I a little in advance, as became a scout, and your father with his own
men, as better suited a soldier of the king--on many a hard fi't and
bloody day. It's the way of us skirmishers to think little of the fight
when the rifle has done cracking; and at night, around our fires, or
on our marches, we talk of the things we love, just as you young women
convarse about your fancies and opinions when you get together to laugh
over your idees. Now it was natural that the Sergeant, having such a
daughter as you, should love her better than anything else, and that
he should talk of her oftener than of anything else,--while I, having
neither daughter, nor sister, nor mother, nor kith, nor kin, nor
anything but the Delawares to love, I naturally chimed in, as it were,
and got to love you, Mabel, before I ever saw you--yes, I did--just by
talking about you so much."

"And now you _have_ seen me," returned the smiling girl, whose unmoved
and natural manner proved how little she was thinking of anything more
than parental or fraternal regard, "you are beginning to see the folly
of forming friendships for people before you know anything about them,
except by hearsay."

"It wasn't friendship--it isn't friendship, Mabel, that I feel for you.
I am the friend of the Delawares, and have been so from boyhood; but my
feelings for them, or for the best of them, are not the same as those I
got from the Sergeant for you; and, especially, now that I begin to know
you better. I'm sometimes afeared it isn't wholesome for one who is much
occupied in a very manly calling, like that of a guide or scout, or
a soldier even, to form friendships for women,--young women in
particular,--as they seem to me to lessen the love of enterprise, and to
turn the feelings away from their gifts and natural occupations."

"You surely do not mean, Pathfinder, that a friendship for a girl like
me wou