It was as the farmer said.  There came to our palates the subtle gustatory perfume of apple blossoms.  Within the old cask there had been stored the fragrance and the spell of the orchard of half a century agone.  It was the wine of the apple; the favoured fruit of the gods.

“Is it supposed to be intoxicating?” asked Marshall.  Bishop laughed uproariously, and Harding joined in his merriment.

“My boy,” Bishop said, “it’s as intoxicating as the feel of your sweetheart’s cheek against your own, only it affects you in a different way.  I’ve known a man to fill up on that smooth-tastin’ and innocent lookin’ stuff an’ not come tew until he was on shipboard, an’ half way to Cape Horn.  Under its influence the secretary of a peace society would tackle the Japanese navy in a rowboat.  From what I know about mythology I’m sure Mars drank it regular.”

Our host drew a generous allowance from a cask containing a more recent vintage, and led the way from out the old cellar to seats beneath the trees facing the smooth turf of an unused croquet ground.

LaHume wandered away in search of the ladies, whose laughter and chatter from the near-by veranda proved they were cheerfully enduring his absence.  I caught a glimpse of Wallace as he drove the cows into the old barn, and wondered if LaHume seriously considered the “hired man” as a rival.

We filled our pipes and lay back in the comfortable seats, content to listen to the music of the birds overhead, and follow aimlessly the conversation between Bishop and Harding.  The cider from the sacred cask had bridged the years which separated them from boyhood days back in Buckfield, Maine.

The old grindstone reminded Harding of an incident, to the telling of which both contributed details.  They told of swimming exploits; of how they helped lock the school teacher out of the little red building which seemed to them a prison; they told of blood-curdling feats of coasting and of skating on thin ice, and of other things more or less distorted, perhaps, when seen through the haze of forty years.

Then they told of the boys they had “licked,” and of the boys who had whipped them, also of the feud between the lads of Buckfield and Sumner and the desperate encounters which resulted from it.

“Do you remember, Bob,” asked Bishop, after a moment’s pause, “of that ‘rasslin’ match we had on the floor of your dad’s barn?”

“The time I got a black eye, and you lost part of your ear?” asked Harding, his eyes brightening at thought of it.

“That’s the time,” declared Bishop.  “I tore your clothes most to pieces.”

“I don’t remember about that,” responded the railroad magnate, “but I do remember that I flopped you three times out of five.”

“Three times outer nothin’!” exclaimed the farmer.  “I put you down fair and square three times running, Bob, and if you’ll stop and think a minute you’ll recollect it.”