“Ay! do I.”—replied the young man with a good deal of bitterness. “But I do not need to see that to teach me that women are capricious and selfish in their exigency of services.” There was a dead pause. A silence, which in itself was painful, and which seemed like to give birth to words more painful yet, for William Allan knit his brow darkly, and compressed his lower lip, and fixed his eye upon vacancy. But at this moment Jasper, whose natural recklessness had rendered him unobservant of the feelings which had been displayed during that short conversation, raised himself on his elbow, and looking eagerly at Durzil exclaimed: “Oh, the Virginia voyage! To the New World! My God! how I should love to go with you. Do you carry guns? How many do you muster of your crew?” The interruption, although the speaker had no such intention, was well timed, for it turned the thoughts and feelings of all present into a new channel. The two old men looked into each other’s faces, and smiled as their eyes met, and Allan whispered, though quite loud enough to be audible to all present: “The same spirit, Miles, the same spirit. As crows the old game cock, so crows the young game chicken!” “And why not?” answered Durzil, with a ready smile, for there was something that whispered at his heart, though indeed he knew not wherefore, that it were not so ill done to remove Jasper from that neighborhood for a while. “If Sir Miles judge it well that you should see something of the world, in these piping times of peace, it is never too soon to begin. You shall have a berth in mine own cabin, and I will put you in the way of seeing swords flash, and smelling villainous saltpetre, in a right good cause, I’ll warrant you.” “A right good cause, Durzil? and what cause may that be?” asked his uncle in a caustic tone. “The cause of England’s maritime supremacy,” answered the young man proudly. “That is cause good enough for me. For what saith bully Blake in the old song— “‘The sea, the sea is England’s, quo’ he again, The sea, the sea is England’s, and England’s shall remain.’” And he caroled the words in a fine deep bass voice, to a stirring air, and then added—“That, sir, is the cause we fight for, on the Line and beyond it—and that we will fight for, here and every where, when it shall be needful to fight for it. And now, young friend, to answer your question. I do carry guns, eighteen as lively brass twelve-pounders as ever spoke good English to a Don or a Monsieur, or a Mynheer either, for that matter; and then for crew, men and officers, I generally contrive to pack on board eighty or ninety as brisk boys as ever pulled upon a brace, or handled a cutlas.” “Why you must reckon on high profits to venture such an outlay,” said Sir Miles, avoiding the question of his son’s participation in the cruise.