n the best of the water and in the plainest part
of the channel."

"Leave it to Mabel, leave it to Mabel; she knows better than any of us,
and can do no harm."

"I have heard this before," Dunham at length replied. "Ah, Mabel! it is
strange for the parent to lean on the child at a moment like this!"

"Put your trust in God, father; lean on His holy and compassionate Son.
Pray, dearest, dearest father; pray for His omnipotent support."

"I am not used to prayer. Brother, Pathfinder--Jasper, can you help me
to words?"

Cap scarcely knew what prayer meant, and he had no answer to give.
Pathfinder prayed often, daily, if not hourly; but it was mentally, in
his own simple modes of thinking, and without the aid of words at all.
In this strait, therefore, he was as useless as the mariner, and had
no reply to make. As for Jasper Eau-douce, though he would gladly
have endeavored to move a mountain to relieve Mabel, this was asking
assistance it exceeded his power to give; and he shrank back with the
shame that is only too apt to overcome the young and vigorous, when
called on to perform an act that tacitly confesses their real weakness
and dependence on a superior power.

"Father," said Mabel, wiping her eyes, and endeavoring to compose
features that were pallid, and actually quivering with emotion, "I will
pray with you, for you, for _myself_; for us _all_. The petition of the
feeblest and humblest is never unheeded."

There was something sublime, as well as much that was supremely
touching, in this act of filial piety. The quiet but earnest manner
in which this young creature prepared herself to perform the duty; the
self-abandonment with which she forgot her sex's timidity and sex's
shame, in order to sustain her parent at that trying moment; the
loftiness of purpose with which she directed all her powers to the
immense object before her, with a woman's devotion and a woman's
superiority to trifles, when her affections make the appeal; and the
holy calm into which her grief was compressed, rendered her, for the
moment, an object of something very like awe and veneration to her
companions.

Mabel had been religiously educated; equally without exaggeration and
without self-sufficiency. Her reliance on God was cheerful and full of
hope, while it was of the humblest and most dependent nature. She
had been accustomed from childhood to address herself to the Deity in
prayer; taking example from the Divine mandate of Chris