He listened to my narrative keenly, but with many interruptions.  And when I was done, he sighed.

“You are always finding friends, Richard,” said he; “no matter what your misfortunes, they are ever double discounted.  As for me; I am like Fulmer in Mr. Cumberland’s ‘West Indian’:  ’I have beat through every quarter of the compass; I have bellowed for freedom; I have offered to serve my country; I have’—­I am engaging to betray it.  No, Scotland is no longer my country, and so I cannot betray her.  It is she who has betrayed me.”

He fell into a short mood of dejection.  And, indeed, I could not but reflect that much of the character fitted him like a jacket.  Not the betrayal of his country.  He never did that, no matter how roundly they accused him of it afterward.

To lift him, I cried: 

“You were one of my first friends, Captain Paul” (I could not stomach the Jones); “but for you I should now be a West Indian, and a miserable one, the slave of some unmerciful hidalgo.  Here’s that I may live to repay you!”

“And while we are upon toasts,” says he, bracing immediately, “I give you the immortal Miss Manners!  Her beauty has dwelt unfaded in my memory since I last beheld her, aboard the Betsy.”  Remarking the pain in my face, he added, with a concern which may have been comical:  “And she is not married?”

“Unless she is lately gone to Gretna, she is not,” I replied, trying to speak lightly.

“Alack!  I knew it,” he exclaimed.  “And if there’s any prophecy in my bones, she’ll be Mrs. Carvel one of these days.”

“Well captain,” I said abruptly, “the wheel has gone around since I saw you.  Now it is you who are the gentleman, while I am a factor.  Is it the bliss you pictured?”

I suspected that his acres were not as broad, nor his produce as salable, as those of Mount Vernon.

“To speak truth, I am heartily tired of that life,” said he.  “There is little glory in raising nicotia, and sipping bumbo, and cursing negroes.  Ho for the sea!” he cried.  “The salt sea, and the British prizes.  Give me a tight frigate that leaves a singing wake.  Mark me, Richard,” he said, a restless gleam coning into his dark eyes, “stirring times are here, and a chance for all of us to make a name.”  For so it seemed ever to be with him.

“They are black times, I fear,” I answered.

“Black!” he said.  “No, glorious is your word.  And we are to have an upheaval to throw many of us to the top.”

“I would rather the quarrel were peacefully settled,” said I, gravely.  “For my part, I want no distinction that is to come out of strife and misery.”

He regarded me quizzically.

“You are grown an hundred years old since I pulled you out of the sea,” says he.  “But we shall have to fight for our liberties.  Here is a glass to the prospect!”

“And so you are now an American?” I said curiously.