nd tried comrade."

"All this sounds well, so far as you and I are consarned; but they do
not touch the case of your pretty daughter. She may think these very
campaigns have destroyed the little comeliness I may once have had; and
I am not quite sartain that being an old friend of her father would lead
any young maiden's mind into a particular affection for a suitor. Like
loves like, I tell you, Sergeant; and my gifts are not altogether the
gifts of Mabel Dunham."

"These are some of your old modest qualms, Pathfinder, and will do you
no credit with the girl. Women distrust men who distrust themselves,
and take to men who distrust nothing. Modesty is a capital thing in a
recruit, I grant you; or in a young subaltern who has just joined, for
it prevents his railing at the non-commissioned officers before he knows
what to rail at; I'm not sure it is out of place in a commissary or a
parson, but it's the devil and all when it gets possession of a real
soldier or a lover. Have as little to do with it as possible, if you
would win a woman's heart. As for your doctrine that like loves like,
it is as wrong as possible in matters of this sort. If like loved
like, women would love one another, and men also. No, no, like loves
dislike,"--the Sergeant was merely a scholar of the camp,--"and you have
nothing to fear from Mabel on that score. Look at Lieutenant Muir;
the man has had five wives already, they tell me, and there is no more
modesty in him than there is in a cat-o'-nine-tails."

"Lieutenant Muir will never be the husband of Mabel Dunham, let him
ruffle his feathers as much as he may."

"That is a sensible remark of yours, Pathfinder; for my mind is made up
that you shall be my son-in-law. If I were an officer myself, Mr. Muir
might have some chance; but time has placed one door between my child
and myself, and I don't intend there shall be that of a marquee also."

"Sergeant, we must let Mabel follow her own fancy; she is young and
light of heart, and God forbid that any wish of mine should lay the
weight of a feather on a mind that is all gaiety now, or take one note
of happiness from her laughter!"

"Have you conversed freely with the girl?" the Sergeant demanded
quickly, and with some asperity of manner.

Pathfinder was too honest to deny a truth plain as that which the answer
required, and yet too honorable to betray Mabel, and expose her to the
resentment of one whom he well knew to be stern in his anger.