第46章

"I hear you are likely to receive orders to lift your an-chor, Sergeant, and to shift your berth into a part of the world where they say there are a thousand islands.""Pathfinder, this is some of your forgetfulness?""Nay, nay, Sergeant, I forgot nothing; but it did not seem to me necessary to hide your intentions so very closely from your own flesh and blood.""All military movements ought to be made with as little conversation as possible," returned the Sergeant, tapping the guide's shoulder in a friendly, but reproachful manner."You have passed too much of your life in front of the French not to know the value of silence.But no matter; the thing must soon be known, and there is no great use in trying now to conceal it.We shall embark a relief party shortly for a post on the lake, though I do not say it is for the Thousand Islands, and I may have to go with it; in which case I intend to take Mabel to make my broth for me; and I hope, brother, you will not despise a soldier's fare for a month or so.""That will depend on the manner of marching.I have no love for woods and swamps.""We shall sail in the _Scud_; and, indeed, the whole service, which is no stranger to us, is likely enough to please one accustomed to the water.""Ay, to salt-water if you will, but not to lake-water.If you have no person to handle that bit of a cutter for you, I have no objection to ship for the v'y'ge, notwithstanding;though I shall look on the whole affair as so much time thrown away for I consider it an imposition to call sailing about this pond going to sea.""Jasper is every way able to manage the _Scud_, brother Cap; and in that light I cannot say that we have need of your services, though we shall be glad of your company.

You cannot return to the settlement until a party is sent in, and that is not likely to happen until after my return.

Well, Pathfinder, this is the first time I ever knew men on the trail of the Mingos and you not at their head.""To be honest with you, Sergeant," returned the guide, not without a little awkwardness of manner, and a per-ceptible difference in the hue of a face that had become so uniformly red by exposure, "I have not felt that it was my gift this morning.In the first place, I very well know that the soldiers of the 55th are not the lads to overtake Iroquois in the woods; and the knaves did not wait to be surrounded when they knew that Jasper had reached the garrison.Then a man may take a little rest after a sum-mer of hard work, and no impeachment of his good-will.

Besides, the Sarpent is out with them; and if the mis-creants are to be found at all, you may trust to his inmity and sight: the first being stronger, and the last nearly, if not quite as good as my own.He loves the skulking vagabonds as little as myself; and, for that matter, I may say that my own feelings towards a Mingo are not much more than the gifts of a Delaware grafted on a Christian stock.No, no, I thought I would leave the honor this time, if honor there is to be, to the young ensign that commands, who, if he don't lose his scalp, may boast of his campaign in his letters to his mother when he gets in.