too much for that! Eh bien!
to-day I love to see him live. When there is no wine in the cup, but only
dregs that are bitter, I laugh to see it at his lips. She,--Ma'm'selle
Audrey, that never before could I coax into my boat,--she reached me her
hand, she came with me down the river, through the night-time, and left
him behind at Westover. Ha! think you not that was bitter, that drink
which she gave him, Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View? Since then, if I go
to that house, that garden at Williamsburgh, she hides, she will not see
me; the man and his wife make excuse! Bad! But also he sees her never. He
writes to her: she answers not. Good! Let him live, with the fire built
around him and the splinters in his heart!"

He laughed again, and, dismissing the subject with airiness somewhat
exaggerated, drew out his huge gilt snuffbox. The snow was now falling
more thickly, drawing a white and fleecy veil between the two upon the
road and the story-teller and his audience beneath the distant elm. "Are
you for Williamsburgh?" demanded the Highlander, when he had somewhat
abruptly declined to take snuff with Monsieur Jean Hugon.

That worthy nodded, pocketing his box and incidentally making a great
jingling of coins.

"Then," quoth MacLean, "since I prefer to travel alone, twill wait here
until you have passed the rolling-house in the distance yonder. Good-day
to you!"

He seated himself upon the stump of a tree, and, giving all his attention
to the snow, began to whistle a thoughtful air. Hugon glanced at him with
fierce black eyes and twitching lips, much desiring a quarrel; then
thought better of it, and before the tune had come to an end was making
with his long and noiseless stride his lonely way to Williamsburgh, and
the ordinary in Nicholson Street.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE PLAYER

About this time, Mr. Charles Stagg, of the Williamsburgh theatre in
Virginia, sent by the Horn of Plenty, bound for London, a long letter to
an ancient comrade and player of small parts at Drury Lane. A few days
later, young Mr. Lee, writing by the Golden Lucy to an agreeable rake of
his acquaintance, burst into a five-page panegyric upon the Arpasia, the
Belvidera, the Monimia, who had so marvelously dawned upon the colonial
horizon. The recipient of this communication, being a frequenter of
Button's, and chancing one day to crack a bottle there with Mr. Colley
Cibber, drew from his pocket and read to that gentleman the eulogy of