
though I am their inimy, I will admit, agreeable to christianity.«
    »Ay, Pathfinder, but Jasper did not get his French as a prisoner; he took it
in, in boyhood, when the mind is easily impressed, and gets its permanent
notions; when nature has a presentiment, as it were, which way the character is
likely to incline.«
    »A very just remark,« added Cap, »for that is the time of life, when we all
learn the catechism, and other moral improvements. The Serjeant's observation
shows that he understands human nature, and I agree with him perfectly; it is a
damnable thing for a youngster, up here, on this bit of fresh water, to talk
French. If it were down on the Atlantic now, where a sea-faring man has occasion
sometimes to converse with a pilot, or a linguister, in that language, I should
not think so much of it, though we always look with suspicion, even there, at a
shipmate who knows too much of the tongue, but up here on Ontario, I hold it to
be a most suspicious circumstance.«
    »But Jasper must talk in French to the people on the other shore,« said
Pathfinder, »or hold his tongue, as there are none but French to speak to.«
    »You do'n't mean to tell me, Pathfinder, that France lies hereaway, on the
opposite coast?« cried Cap, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, in the direction
of the Canadas; »that one side of this bit of fresh water, is York, and the
other France!«
    »I mean to tell you this is York, and that is Upper Canada, and that English
and Dutch and Indian are spoken in the first, and French and Indian in the last.
Even the Mingos have got many of the French words in their dialect, and it is no
improvement, neither.«
    »Very true, and what sort of people are the Mingos, my friend?« inquired the
serjeant, touching the other on a shoulder, by way of enforcing a remark, the
inherent truth of which sensibly increased its value in the eyes of the speaker
- »No one knows them better than yourself, and I ask you what sort of a tribe
are they?«
    »Jasper is no Mingo, Sarjeant.«
    »He speaks French, and he might as well be, in that particular. Brother Cap,
can you recollect no movement of this unfortunate young man, in the way of his
calling
