Haward smiled, and drawing two glasses toward him slowly filled them with wine.  “It is true,” he said, “that it is not my intention to become a petitioner for the pardon of a rebel to his serene and German Majesty the King; true also that I like the fragrance of the lily.  I have my fancies.  Say that I am a man of whim, and that, living in a lonely house set in a Sahara of tobacco fields, it is my whim to desire the acquaintance of the only gentleman within some miles of me.  Say that my fancy hath been caught by a picture drawn for me a week agone; that, being a philosopher, I play with the idea that your spirit, knife in hand, walked at my elbow for ten years, and I knew it not.  Say that the idea has for me a curious fascination.  Say, finally, that I plume myself that, given the chance, I might break down this airy hatred.”

He set down the bottle, and pushed one of the brimming glasses across the table.  “I should like to make trial of my strength,” he said, with, a laugh.  “Come!  I did you a service to-day; in your turn do me a pleasure.”

MacLean dragged a chair to the table, and sat down.  “I will drink with you,” he said, “and forget for an hour.  A man grows tired—­It is Burgundy, is it not?  Old Borlum and I emptied a bottle between us, the day he went as hostage to Wills; since then I have not tasted wine.  ’Tis a pretty color.”

Haward lifted his glass.  “I drink to your future.  Freedom, better days, a stake in a virgin land, friendship with a sometime foe.”  He bowed to his guest and drank.

“In my country,” answered MacLean, “where we would do most honor, we drink not to life, but to death. Crioch onarach! Like a gentleman may you die.”  He drank, and sighed with pleasure.

“The King!” said Haward.  There was a china bowl, filled with red anemones, upon the table.  MacLean drew it toward him, and, pressing aside the mass of bloom, passed his glass over the water in the bowl.  “The King! with all my heart,” he said imperturbably.

Haward poured more wine.  “I have toasted at the Kit-Kat many a piece of brocade and lace less fair than yon bit of Quaker gray that cost you a broken head.  Shall we drink to Mistress Truelove Taberer?”

By now the Burgundy had warmed the heart and loosened the tongue of the man who had not tasted wine since the surrender of Preston.  “It is but a mile from the store to her father’s house,” he said.  “Sometimes on Sundays I go up the creek upon the Fair View side, and when I am over against the house I holloa.  Ephraim comes, in his boat and rows me across, and I stay for an hour.  They are strange folk, the Quakers.  In her sight and in that of her people I am as good a man as you.  ’Friend Angus MacLean,’ ’Friend Marmaduke Haward,’—­world’s wealth and world’s rank quite beside the question.”

He drank, and commended the wine.  Haward struck a silver bell, and bade Juba bring another bottle.

“When do you come again to the house at Fair View?” asked the storekeeper.