and I felt for you a constant hatred.  It began when I knew that Ewin Mackinnon was dead.  I had no need of love; I had need of hate.  Day after day, my body slaving here, my mind has dogged your footsteps.  Up and down, to and fro, in business and in pleasure, in whatever place I have imagined you to be, there have I been also.  Did you never, when there seemed none by, look over your shoulder, feeling another presence than your own?”

He ceased to speak, and the hand upon the cask was still.  The sunshine was clean gone from the room, and without the door the wind in the locust-tree answered the voice of the river.  Haward rose from his seat, but made no further motion toward departing.  “You have been frank,” he said quietly.  “Had you it in mind, all this while, so to speak to me when we should meet?”

“No,” answered the other.  “I thought not of words, but of”—­

“But of deeds,” Haward finished for him.  “Rather, I imagine, of one deed.”

Composed as ever in voice and manner, he drew out his watch, and held it aslant that the light might strike upon the dial. “’T is after six,” he remarked as he put it away, “and I am yet a mile from the house.”  The wine that he had poured for himself had been standing, untouched, upon the keg beside him.  He took it up and drank it off; then wiped his lips with his handkerchief, and passing the storekeeper with a slight inclination of his head walked toward the door.  A yard beyond the man who had so coolly shown his side of the shield was a rude table, on which were displayed hatchets and hunting knives.  Haward passed the gleaming steel; then, a foot beyond it, stood still, his face to the open door, and his back to the storekeeper and the table with its sinister lading.

“You do wrong to allow so much dust and disorder,” he said sharply.  “I could write my name in that mirror, and there is a piece of brocade fallen to the floor.  Look to it that you keep the place more neat.”

There was dead silence for a moment; then MacLean spoke in an even voice:  “Now a fool might call you as brave as Hector.  For myself, I only give you credit for some knowledge of men.  You are right.  It is not my way to strike in the back an unarmed man.  When you are gone, I will wipe off the mirror and pick up the brocade.”

He followed Haward outside.  “It’s a brave evening for riding,” he remarked, “and you have a bonny bit of horseflesh there.  You’ll get to the house before candlelight.”

Beside one of the benches Haward made another pause.  “You are a Highlander and a Jacobite,” he said.  “From your reference to Forster, I gather that you were among the prisoners taken at Preston and transported to Virginia.”

“In the Elizabeth and Anne of Liverpool, alias a bit of hell afloat; the master, Captain Edward Trafford, alias Satan’s first mate,” quoth the other grimly.