call it. It's one of these coming tastes,
but when it hits you you cry for more."

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 bar