
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 do'n'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 egg shells, 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
browbeating 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
Serjeant, 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 any thing 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 extraordinary in Jasper's
knowing the facts he had
