dismissed the black.

"You would take nothing at my hands the other day," he said to the grim
figure at the window. "Change your mind, my friend,--or my foe,--and come
sit and drink with me."

MacLean reared himself from his seat, and went stiffly over to the table.
"I have eaten and drunken with an enemy before to-day," he said. "Once I
met Ewin Mor Mackinnon upon a mountain side. He had oatcake in his
sporran, and I a flask of usquebaugh. We couched in the heather, and ate
and drank together, and then we rose and fought. I should have slain him
but that a dozen Mackinnons came up the glen, and he turned and fled to
them for cover. Here I am in an alien land; a thousand fiery crosses would
not bring one clansman to my side; I cannot fight my foe. Wherefore, then,
should I take favors at his hands?"

"Why should you be my foe?" demanded Haward. "Look you, now! There was a
time, I suppose, when I was an insolent youngster like any one of those
who lately set upon you; but now I call myself a philosopher and man of a
world for whose opinions I care not overmuch. My coat is of fine cloth,
and my shirt of holland; your shirt is lockram, and you wear no coat at
all: _ergo_, saith a world of pretty fellows, we are beings of separate
planets. 'As the cloth is, the man is,'--to which doctrine I am at times
heretic. I have some store of yellow metal, and spend my days in ridding
myself of it,--a feat which you have accomplished. A goodly number of
acres is also counted unto me, but in the end my holding and your holding
will measure the same. I walk a level road; you have met with your
precipice, and, bruised by the fall, you move along stony ways; but
through the same gateway we go at last. Fate, not I, put you here. Why
should you hate me who am of your order?"