The Pathfinder | Page 5

Arrowhead, do you make us, by your calculation, from the bit of a pond
that you call the Great Lake, and towards which we have been so many
days shaping our course?"
The Tuscarora looked at the seaman with quiet superiority as he
answered, "Ontario, like heaven; one sun, and the great traveller will
know it."
"Well, I have been a great traveller, I cannot deny; but of all my v'y'ges
this has been the longest, the least profitable, and the farthest inland. If
this body of fresh water is so nigh, Arrowhead, and so large, one might
think a pair of good eyes would find it out; for apparently everything
within thirty miles is to be seen from this lookout."
"Look," said Arrowhead, stretching an arm before him with quiet grace;
"Ontario!"
"Uncle, you are accustomed to cry 'Land ho!' but not 'Water ho!' and
you do not see it," cried the niece, laughing, as girls will laugh at their
own idle conceits.
"How now, Magnet! dost suppose that I shouldn't know my native

element if it were in sight?"
"But Ontario is not your native element, dear uncle; for you come from
the salt water, while this is fresh."
"That might make some difference to your young mariner, but none to
the old one. I should know water, child, were I to see it in China."
"Ontario," repeated Arrowhead, with emphasis, again stretching his
hand towards the north-west.
Cap looked at the Tuscarora, for the first time since their acquaintance,
with something like an air of contempt, though he did not fail to follow
the direction of the chief's eye and arm, both of which were directed
towards a vacant point in the heavens, a short distance above the plain
of leaves.
"Ay, ay; this is much as I expected, when I left the coast in search of a
fresh-water pond," resumed Cap, shrugging his shoulders like one
whose mind was made up, and who thought no more need be said.
"Ontario may be there, or, for that matter, it may be in my pocket. Well,
I suppose there will be room enough, when we reach it, to work our
canoe. But Arrowhead, if there be pale-faces in our neighborhood, I
confess I should like to get within hail of them."
The Tuscarora now gave a quiet inclination of his head, and the whole
party descended from the roots of the up-torn tree in silence. When they
reached the ground, Arrowhead intimated his intention to go towards
the fire, and ascertain who had lighted it; while he advised his wife and
the two others to return to a canoe, which they had left in the adjacent
stream, and await his return.
"Why, chief, this might do on soundings, and in an offing where one
knew the channel," returned old Cap; "but in an unknown region like
this I think it unsafe to trust the pilot alone too far from the ship: so,
with your leave, we will not part company."
"What my brother want?" asked the Indian gravely, though without

taking offence at a distrust that was sufficiently plain.
"Your company, Master Arrowhead, and no more. I will go with you
and speak these strangers."
The Tuscarora assented without difficulty, and again he directed his
patient and submissive little wife, who seldom turned her full rich black
eye on him but to express equally her respect, her dread, and her love,
to proceed to the boat. But here Magnet raised a difficulty. Although
spirited, and of unusual energy under circumstances of trial, she was
but woman; and the idea of being entirely deserted by her two male
protectors, in the midst of a wilderness that her senses had just told her
was seemingly illimitable, became so keenly painful, that she expressed
a wish to accompany her uncle.
"The exercise will be a relief, dear sir, after sitting so long in the
canoe," she added, as the rich blood slowly returned to a cheek that had
paled in spite of her efforts to be calm; "and there may be females with
the strangers."
"Come, then, child; it is but a cable's length, and we shall return an
hour before the sun sets."
With this permission, the girl, whose real name was Mabel Dunham,
prepared to be of the party; while the Dew-of-June, as the wife of
Arrowhead was called, passively went her way towards the canoe, too
much accustomed to obedience, solitude, and the gloom of the forest to
feel apprehension.
The three who remained in the wind-row now picked their way around
its tangled maze, and gained the margin of the woods. A few glances of
the eye sufficed for Arrowhead; but old Cap deliberately set the smoke
by a pocket-compass, before he trusted himself within the shadows of
the