of the sea is desirable.  Driving sleet, armies of the snow, night and trackless mountains, the leap of the torrent, swollen lakes where kelpies lie in wait, wind on the sea with the black reef and the charging breakers,—­it is well to dash one’s force against the force of these, and to die after fighting.  But in this cursed land of warmth and ease a man dies like a dog that is old and hath lain winter and summer upon the hearthstone.”  He drank his wine, and glanced again at Haward.  “I did not know that you were here,” he said.  “Saunderson told me that you were going to Westover.”

“I was,—­I am,” answered Haward briefly.  Presently he roused himself from the brown study into which he had fallen.

“’Tis the heat, as you say.  It enervates.  For my part, I am willing that your wind should arise.  But it will not blow to-night.  There is not a breath; the river is like glass.”  He raised the wine to his lips, and drank deeply.  “Come,” he said, laughing.  “What did you at the store to-day?  And does Mistress Truelove despair of your conversion to thee and thou, and peace with all mankind?  Hast procured an enemy to fill the place I have vacated?  I trust he’s no scurvy foe.”

“I will take your questions in order,” answered the other sententiously.  “This morning I sold a deal of fine china to a parcel of fine ladies who came by water from Jamestown, and were mightily concerned to know whether your worship was gone to Westover, or had instead (as ’t was reported) shut yourself up in Fair View house.  And this afternoon came over in a periagua, from the other side, a very young gentleman with money in hand to buy a silver-fringed glove.  ‘They are sold in pairs,’ said I.  ’Fellow, I require but one,’ said he.  ’If Dick Allen, who hath slandered me to Mistress Betty Cocke, dareth to appear at the merrymaking at Colonel Harrison’s to-night, his cheek and this glove shall come together!’ ‘Nathless, you must pay for both,’ I told him; and the upshot is that he leaves with me a gold button as earnest that he will bring the remainder of the price before the duel to-morrow.  That Quaker maiden of whom you ask hath a soul like the soul of Colna-dona, of whom Murdoch, the harper of Coll, used to sing.  She is fair as a flower after winter, and as tender as the rose flush in which swims yonder star.  When I am with her, almost she persuades me to think ill of honest hatred, and to pine no longer that it was not I that had the killing of Ewin Mackinnon.”  He gave a short laugh, and stooping picked up an oak twig from the ground, and with deliberation broke it into many small pieces.  “Almost, but not quite,” he said.  “There was in that feud nothing illusory or fantastic; nothing of the quality that marked, mayhap, another feud of my own making.  If I have found that in this latter case I took a wraith and dubbed it my enemy; that, thinking I followed a foe, I followed a friend instead”—­He threw away the bits of bark, and straightened himself.  “A friend!” he said, drawing his breath.  “Save for this Quaker family, I have had no friend for many a year!  And I cannot talk to them of honor and warfare and the wide world.”  His speech was sombre, but in his eyes there was an eagerness not without pathos.