“Ay, in one of your great silver goblets, with a forest of mint atop. Ha, this is comfort!” He sank into an armchair, stretched his legs before the blaze, and began to look about him. “I have ever said, Haward, that of all the gentlemen of my acquaintance you have the most exact taste. I told Bubb Dodington as much, last year, at Eastbury. Damask, mirrors, paintings, china, cabinets,--all chaste and quiet, extremely elegant, but without ostentation! It hath an air, too. I would swear a woman had the placing of yonder painted jars!” “You are right,” said Haward, smiling. “The wife of the minister of this parish was good enough to come to my assistance.” “Ah!” said the Colonel dryly. “Did Atalanta come as well? She is his reverence’s servant, is she not?” “No,” answered Haward shortly to the last question, and, leaning across, stirred the fire. The light caused to sparkle a jeweled pin worn in the lace of his ruffles, and the toy caught the Colonel’s eye. “One of Spotswood’s golden horseshoes!” he exclaimed. “I had them wrought for him in London. Had they been so many stars and garters, he could have made no greater pother! ’Tis ten years since I saw one.” Haward detached the horseshoe-shaped bauble from the lace, and laid it on the other’s palm. The master of Westover regarded it curiously, and read aloud the motto engraved upon its back: “‘Sic Juvat Transcendere Montes.’ A barren exploit! But some day I too shall please myself and cross these sun-kissing hills. And so the maid with the eyes is not his reverence’s servant? What is she?” Haward took the golden horseshoe in his own hand, and fell to studying it in the firelight. “I wore this to-night,” he said at length, with deliberation, “in order that it might bring to your mind that sprightly ultramontane expedition in which, my dear Colonel, had you not been in England, you had undoubtedly borne a part. You have asked me a question; I will answer it with a story, and so the time may pass more rapidly until the arrival of Mr. MacLean with our friends who set traps.” He turned the mimic horseshoe this way and that, watching the small gems, that simulated nails, flash in the red light. “Some days to the west of Germanna,” he said, “when about us were the lesser mountains, and before us those that propped the sky, we came one sunny noon upon a valley, a little valley, very peaceful below the heights. A stream shone through it, and there were noble trees, and beside the stream the cabin of a frontiersman.”