"Vera good," retorted Madame; "but if the King wanted my forest trees for naething, I should say, 'your Majesty has plenty o' soldiers wi' little to do; let them go and cut what they want.' They wouldna waste it if they had it to cut. But the wastrie in everything is simply sinful, and I canna think where the Blacks and Vanderlanes, and all the other 'Vans' you name--and whom I never heard tell of in our kirk--get the money."

"Privateering!" said Macpherson with a gay laugh. "Who would not be a roving privateer? I have myself longings for the life. I have thoughts of joining Vandercliff's fleet."

"You are just leeing, young man," interrupted Madame. "It would be a thing impossible. The Macphersons have nae salt water in their blood. Could you fling awa' your tartans for a sailor's tarry coat and breeches? How would you look if you did? And you would feel worse than you looked."

Macpherson glanced at his garb with a smile of satisfaction. "I am a Macpherson," he answered, proudly, "and I would not change the colors of my regiment for a royal mantle; but privateering is no small temptation. On the deck of a privateer you may pick up gold and silver."

"That is not very far from the truth," said Neil. "In the first year of the war the rebel privateers took two hundred and fifty West Indiamen, valued at nearly two millions of pounds, and Mr. Morris complained that the Eastern states cared for nothing but privateering."

"Weel, Morris caught the fever himself," said the Elder. "I have been told he made nearly four hundred thousand dollars in the worst year the rebel army ever had."

"Do the rebels call that patriotism?" asked Macpherson.

"Yes," answered the Elder, "from a Whig point of view it is vera patriotic; what do you think, Neil?"

"If I was a Whig," answered Neil, "I should certainly own privateers. Without considering the personal advantage, privateering brings great riches into the country; it impoverishes the enemy, and it adds enormously to the popularity of the war. The men who have hitherto gone to the Arctic seas for whales, find more wealthy and congenial work in capturing English ships."

"And when men get money by wholesale high-seas robbery----"

"Privateering, Madame," corrected Macpherson.

"Weel, weel, give it any name you like--what I want to say is, that money got 

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