Sergeant Dunham laid his hand feebly on the head of Mabel as she ceased praying, and buried her face in his blanket.

“Bless you, my beloved child! bless you!” he rather whispered than uttered aloud; “this is truly consolation:  would that I too could pray!”

“Father, you know the Lord’s Prayer; you taught it to me yourself while I was yet an infant.”

The Sergeant’s face gleamed with a smile, for he did remember to have discharged that portion at least of the paternal duty, and the consciousness of it gave him inconceivable gratification at that solemn moment.  He was then silent for several minutes, and all present believed that he was communing with God.

“Mabel, my child!” he at length uttered, in a voice which seemed to be reviving, —­ “Mabel, I’m quitting you.”  The spirit at its great and final passage appears ever to consider the body as nothing.  “I’m quitting you, my child; where is your hand?”

“Here, dearest father —­ here are both —­ oh, take both!”

“Pathfinder,” added the Sergeant, feeling on the opposite side of the bed, where Jasper still knelt, and getting one of the hands of the young man by mistake, “take it — I leave you as her father —­ as you and she may please —­bless you —­ bless you both!”

At that awful instant, no one would rudely apprise the Sergeant of his mistake; and he died a minute or two later, holding Jasper’s and Mabel’s hands covered by both his own.  Our heroine was ignorant of the fact until an exclamation of Cap’s announced the death of her father; when, raising her face, she saw the eyes of Jasper riveted on her own, and felt the warm pressure of his hand.  But a single feeling was predominant at that instant, and Mabel withdrew to weep, scarcely conscious of what had occurred.  The Pathfinder took the arm of Eau-douce, and he left the block.

The two friends walked in silence past the fire, along the glade, and nearly reached the opposite shore of the island in profound silence.  Here they stopped, and Pathfinder spoke.

“’Tis all over, Jasper,” said he, —­ “’tis all over.  Ah’s me!  Poor Sergeant Dunham has finished his march, and that, too, by the hand of a venomous Mingo.  Well, we never know what is to happen, and his luck may be yourn or mine to-morrow or next day!”

“And Mabel?  What is to become of Mabel, Pathfinder?”

“You heard the Sergeant’s dying words; he has left his child in my care, Jasper; and it is a most solemn trust, it is; yes, —­ it is a most solemn trust.”

“It’s a trust, Pathfinder, of which any man would be glad to relieve you,” returned the youth, with a bitter smile.

“I’ve often thought it has fallen into wrong hands.  I’m not consaited, Jasper; I’m not consaited, I do think I’m not; but if Mabel Dunham is willing to overlook all my imperfections and ignorances like, I should be wrong to gainsay it, on account of any sartainty I may have myself about my own want of merit.”