“This gentleman hath a broken head, Juba,” said the master.  “Bring water and linen, and bind it up for him.”

As he spoke he laid aside hat and rapier, and motioned MacLean to a seat by the window.  The latter obeyed the gesture in silence, and in silence submitted to the ministrations of the negro.  Haward, sitting at the table, waited until the wound had been dressed; then with a wave of the hand dismissed the black.

“You would take nothing at my hands the other day,” he said to the grim figure at the window.  “Change your mind, my friend,—­or my foe,—­and come sit and drink with me.”

MacLean reared himself from his seat, and went stiffly over to the table.  “I have eaten and drunken with an enemy before to-day,” he said.  “Once I met Ewin Mor Mackinnon upon a mountain side.  He had oatcake in his sporran, and I a flask of usquebaugh.  We couched in the heather, and ate and drank together, and then we rose and fought.  I should have slain him but that a dozen Mackinnons came up the glen, and he turned and fled to them for cover.  Here I am in an alien land; a thousand fiery crosses would not bring one clansman to my side; I cannot fight my foe.  Wherefore, then, should I take favors at his hands?”

“Why should you be my foe?” demanded Haward.  “Look you, now!  There was a time, I suppose, when I was an insolent youngster like any one of those who lately set upon you; but now I call myself a philosopher and man of a world for whose opinions I care not overmuch.  My coat is of fine cloth, and my shirt of holland; your shirt is lockram, and you wear no coat at all:  ergo, saith a world of pretty fellows, we are beings of separate planets.  ’As the cloth is, the man is,’—­to which doctrine I am at times heretic.  I have some store of yellow metal, and spend my days in ridding myself of it,—­a feat which you have accomplished.  A goodly number of acres is also counted unto me, but in the end my holding and your holding will measure the same.  I walk a level road; you have met with your precipice, and, bruised by the fall, you move along stony ways; but through the same gateway we go at last.  Fate, not I, put you here.  Why should you hate me who am of your order?”

MacLean left the table, and twice walked the length of the room, slowly and with knitted brows.  “If you mean the world-wide order,—­the order of gentlemen,”—­he said, coming to a pause with the breadth of the table between him and Haward, “we may have that ground in common.  The rest is debatable land.  I do not take you for a sentimentalist or a redresser of wrongs.  I am your storekeeper, purchased with that same yellow metal of which you so busily rid yourself; and your storekeeper I shall remain until the natural death of my term, two years hence.  We are not countrymen; we own different kings; I may once have walked your level road, but you have never moved in the stony ways; my eyes are blue, while yours are gray; you love your melting Southern music, and I take no joy save in the pipes; I dare swear you like the smell of lilies which I cannot abide, and prefer fair hair in women where I would choose the dark.  There is no likeness between us.  Why, then”—­