kguards."

"I daresay, Master Cap, that the advice of as old a seaman as you might
have done no harm to as young a sailor as myself, but it is a long and a
hopeless chase that has a bark canoe in it."

"You would have had only to press it hard, to drive it ashore."

"Ashore, master Cap! You do not understand our lake navigation at all,
if you suppose it an easy matter to force a bark canoe ashore. As soon
as they find themselves pressed, these bubbles paddle right into the
wind's eye, and before you know it, you find yourself a mile or two dead
under their lee."

"You don't wish me to believe, Master Jasper, that any one is so
heedless of drowning as to put off into this lake in one of them
eggshells when there is any wind?"

"I have often crossed Ontario in a bark canoe, even when there has been
a good deal of sea on. Well managed, they are the driest boats of which
we have any knowledge."

Cap now led his brother-in-law and Pathfinder aside, when he assured him
that the admission of Jasper concerning the spies was "a circumstance,"
and "a strong circumstance," and as such it deserved his deliberate
investigation; while his account of the canoes was so improbable as
to wear the appearance of brow-beating the listeners. Jasper spoke
confidently of the character of the two individuals who had landed, and
this Cap deemed pretty strong proof that he knew more about them than
was to be gathered from a mere trail. As for moccasins, he said that
they were worn in that part of the world by white men as well as by
Indians; he had purchased a pair himself; and boots, it was notorious,
did not particularly make a soldier. Although much of this logic was
thrown away on the Sergeant, still it produced some effect. He thought
it a little singular himself, that there should have been spies detected
so near the fort and he know nothing of it; nor did he believe that this
was a branch of knowledge that fell particularly within the sphere of
Jasper. It was true that the _Scud_ had, once or twice, been sent across
the lake to land men of this character, or to bring them off; but
then the part played by Jasper, to his own certain knowledge, was very
secondary, the master of the cutter remaining as ignorant as any one
else of the purport of the visits of those whom he had carried to and
fro; nor did he see why he alone, of all present, should know anything
of the late visit. Pathfinder viewed the matter differently. With his
habitua