award 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