r!" Captain
Roland struck his cane into the peat and exclaimed, "Zounds, sir! the
Bar and lying, with truth and a world fresh from God before you!"

"Your hand, uncle,--we understand each other. Now help me with those two
quiet hearts at home!"

"Plague on my tongue! what have I done?" said the Captain, looking
aghast. Then, after musing a little time, he turned his dark eye on me
and growled out, "I suspect, young sir, you have been laying a trap for
me; and I have fallen into it, like an old fool as I am."

"Oh, sir, I? you prefer the Bar!--"

"Rogue!"

"Or, indeed, I might perhaps get a clerkship in a merchant's office?"

"If you do, I will scratch you out of the pedigree!"

"Huzza, then, for Australasia!"

"Well, well, well!" said my uncle,--

"With a smile on his lip, and a tear in his eye,"--

"the old sea-king's blood will force its way,--a soldier or a rover,
there is no other choice for you. We shall mourn and miss you; but who
can chain the young eagles to the eyrie?"

I had a harder task with my father, who at first seemed to listen to me
as if I had been talking of an excursion to the moon. But I threw in a
dexterous dose of the old Greek Cleruchioe cited by Trevanion, which set
him off full trot on his hobby, till after a short excursion to Euboea
and the Chersonese, he was fairly lost amidst the Ionian colonies of
Asia Minor. I then gradually and artfully decoyed him into his favorite
science of Ethnology; and while he was speculating on the origin of
the American savages, and considering the rival claims of Cimmerians,
Israelites, and Scandinavians, I said quietly: "And you, sir, who think
that all human improvement depends on the mixture of races; you,
whose whole theory is an absolute sermon upon emigration, and the
transplanting and interpolity of our species,--you, sir, should be the
last man to chain your son, your elder son, to the soil, while your
younger is the very missionary of rovers."

"Pisistratus," said my father, "you reason by synecdoche,--ornamental,
but illogical;" and therewith, resolved to hear no more, my father rose
and retreated into his study.

But his observation, now quickened, began from that day to follow
my moods and humors; then he himself grew silent and thoughtful, and
finally he took to long conferences with Roland. The result was that
one evening in spring, as I lay listless amidst the weeds and fern that
sprang up through the melancholy ruins, I felt a