第81章

"Had I been out that night, -- and I now recollect no suffi-cient reason why I was not, -- it might, indeed, have turned out as you say.""It was the evening you passed with us, Pathfinder,"Mabel innocently remarked; "surely one who lives so much of his time in the forest, in front of the enemy, may be excused for giving a few hours of his time to an old friend and his daughter.""Nay, nay, I've done little else but idle since we reached the garrison," returned the other, sighing; "and it is well that the lad should tell me of it: the idler needs a rebuke - yes, he needs a rebuke.""Rebuke, Pathfinder! I never dreamt of saying any-thing disagreeable, and least of all would I think of re-buking you, because a solitary spy and an Indian or two have escaped us.Now I know where you were, I think your absence the most natural thing in the world.""I think nothing of what you said, Jasper, since it was deserved.We are all human, and all do wrong.""This is unkind, Pathfinder."

"Give me your hand, lad, give me your hand.It wasn't you that gave the lesson; it was conscience.""Well, well," interrupted Cap; "now this latter matter is settled to the satisfaction of all parties, perhaps you will tell us how it happened to be known that there were spies near us so lately.This looks amazingly like a circum-stance."

As the mariner uttered the last sentence, he pressed a foot slily on that of the Sergeant, and nudged the guide with his elbow, winking at the same time, though this sign was lost in the obscurity.

"It is known, because their trail was found next day by the Serpent, and it was that of a military boot and a moc-cassin.One of our hunters, moreover, saw the canoe cross-ing towards Frontenac next morning."

"Did the trail lead near the garrison, Jasper?" Path-finder asked in a manner so meek and subdued that it re-sembled the tone of a rebuked schoolboy."Did the trail lead near the garrison, lad?""We thought not; though, of course, it did not cross the river.It was followed down to the eastern point, at the river's mouth, where what was doing in port, might be seen; but it did not cross, as we could discover.""And why didn't you get under weigh, Master Jasper,"Cap demanded, "and give chase? On Tuesday morning it blew a good breeze; one in which this cutter might have run nine knots.""That may do on the ocean, Master Cap," put in Path-finder, "but it would not do here.Water leaves no trail, and a Mingo and a Frenchman are a match for the devil in a pursuit.""Who wants a trail when the chase can be seen from the deck, as Jasper here said was the case with this canoe?

and it mattered nothing if there were twenty of your Mingos and Frenchmen, with a good British-built bottom in their wake.I'll engage, Master Eau-douce, had you given me a call that said Tuesday morning, that we should have over-hauled the blackguards."

"I daresay, Master Cap, that the advice of as old a sea-man 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 knowl-edge."

Cap now led his brother-in-law and Pathfinder aside, when he assured him that the admission of Jasper con-cerning the spies was "a circumstance," and "a strong cir-cumstance," and as such it deserved his deliberate investiga-tion; 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 indi-viduals who had landed, and this Cap deemed pretty strong proof that he knew more about them than was to be gath-ered from a mere trail.As for mocassins, 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 Ser-geant, 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 par-ticularly 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 habitual diffidence, he reproached himself with a neglect of duty, and that knowledge, of which the want struck him as a fault in one whose business it was to possess it, appeared a merit in the young man.He saw nothing ex-traordinary in Jasper's knowing the facts he had related;while he did feel it was unusual, not to say disgraceful, that he himself now heard of them for the first time.