coursing of former days. This led on to a rehearsal of his adventures, and my heart, for auld acquaintance, having a warm side towards him, and my circumstances being then green and prosperous, I began to think of some way to serve him. I could not, however, of my own mind, devise a right method, but I told him, if he could point out a way wherein I could be useful, he might count upon my friendship.

A short time after this conversation-I am disposed on recollection to think it was the very morrow following-Alek came to me, and said that he had fallen in with several old shipmates willing to embark with him a privateering, if they could get a man of capital to hire with them a fast-sailing, pilot-boat schooner.

As privateering was in my opinion not a very reputable trade, to say nothing of British tars becoming enemies to their native land, I remonstrated strongly against the project, and point-blank, in a sense, refused to have any thing to do with it. However, without being well able to tell how it came to pass, Alek Preston, by little and little, so overcame my scruples,

that at last I consented to take a very small

share just to oblige him.

But when the outfit was completed, a difficulty arose which had not been thought of. We could not get letters of reprisal, unless the captain and a certain number of the crew were American citizens. This had well nigh knocked the whole scheme on the head. Alek Preston, however, swore a boatswain's oath that he would not be stopped by such laws: accordingly, he went away, and I saw nothing of him for several days; at the end of which he came to inform me that all was cleared, and that he intended to set sail on his cruise that very evening.

For some time I tried without success to discover how he had overcome the difficulty which I thought insurmountable, but he made me no wiser. However, as it behoved us to take a glass of punch on the occasion, it came out in the drinking that he had got himself certified to be an American citizen, by an old woman swearing that she had known him from the cradle, in which she had herself rocked him.

This was true; for, man as he was, he had mounted into a child's cradle, and the old woman certainly did rock him. This, to my shame I must acknowledge, was a device which, without approving, caused me to laugh so heartily, that I could not very indignantly condemn it. But as he was proceeding to rehearse the story with great glee, I had a pang of conscience, and I started from my seat in a vehement passion, declaring I would have nothing to do with such forgeries. Alek Preston rose at the same time, and before I had given vent to the half of my indignation, he left the house, went straight to the schooner, and was off and away on his cruise before daylight.

I hope the courteous reader discerns in the part I had in this privateering affair, that I was altogether actuated by my regard for an old school comrade; and I hope, too, he has a better opinion of me than to think I would ever have been consenting to such deceit and profanity. The like things, it was said, were common in those days among what were called the picked-up-along-shore English sailors, but I never heard of a decent American that did

not condemn the practice; and what honest man, be he Turk or Pagan, could approve it ?

I need not say, after this preface, that the venture came to no profit. Alek Preston being captain, instead of cruising where he was likely to meet prizes, went down to the southward, and ran races with his schooner against other craft, by which in less than two months he perished the pack, and left the vessel at Charlestown by moonlight. I never heard of him more, but I had long reason to rue the trust I had placed in him.

CHAPTER VII.

"I showed him all the secrets of the isle."

THE venture with Alek Preston was the first in which I too lightly considered the hallowed maxims of my father, and by it I received the first admonishment that the issues of fortune are ruled by another kind of wisdom than the cunning of man. I had, in a theoretical manner, a just conception of this truth, but it was a theory unsanctioned by experience—a plausible supposition which made no part of the sentiment nor of the reasoning which influenced my conduct. In short, though the thoughtlessness of that poor young man caused a great loss to me, I yet saw not in what had been done the extent of my own folly, but pacified my conscience, then