"A contagion," Swynyard responded mysteriously, without offering any more formal greeting to his fellow prisoner, "that's what I am, Starbuck, a contagion. A contamination. An infection. A plague. Unclean. Out of step. Do you ever feel out of step with all mankind?" The Colonel raised his head as he asked the question. His eyes were red. "I tell you, Starbuck, that the world would be a better place without me."

Starbuck, alarmed at the wild words, looked more closely at the object in the Colonel's hands. He had presumed it was a Bible and now feared to see a revolver, but instead he saw it was an uncorked bottle. "Oh, no," Starbuck said, astonished at his own disappointment. "Are you getting drunk?"

Swynyard did not answer. He just stared at the bottle, turning it in his hands as though he had never seen such an object before. "What did Faulconer say to you?" the Colonel asked finally.

"Nothing much," Starbuck said, using a tone of indifference to show defiance. "He said I'd disobeyed orders."

"You obeyed my orders, but that won't make any difference with Faulconer. He hates you. He hates me, too, but he hates you more. He thinks you took his son away." The Colonel went on staring at the bottle, then shook his head wearily. "I'm not drinking. I took a sip and spat it out. But I was going to drink it. Then you came in." He held the bottle close to the dripping, spluttering taper, so that the feeble light refracted through the green glass and amber liquid. "Faulconer gave it to me. He says I deserve it. It's the best whiskey in America, he says, from Bourbon County, Kentucky. None of your bust-head tonight, Starbuck. No rotgut or pop-skull, no red-line special, no brain-buster, no skull-splitter, no tanglefoot tonight." The mention of tanglefoot whiskey evidently prompted some memory that made the Colonel close his eyes in sudden pain. "No, sir," he went on sadly, "only the best of Bourbon County whiskey for Griffin Swynyard. Clear as a dewdrop, do you see?" He again held the bottle to the taper's light. "Isn't that beautiful?"

"You don't need it, Colonel," Starbuck said softly.

"But I do, Starbuck. I need either God or whiskey, and whiskey, I have to tell you, is a great deal more convenient than God. It is more available than God and it is more predictable than God. Whiskey, Starbuck, does not make demands like God, and the salvation it offers is every bit as certain as God's, and even if that salvation is not as long in duration as God's salvation it is still a true and tried remedy for the miseries of life. Whiskey is a consolation, Starbuck, and a very present help in times of trouble, and never more so than when it comes from Bourbon County, Kentucky." He swirled the bottle slowly, gazing reverently at its contents. "Are you going to preach to me, Starbuck?"

"No, sir. I've been preached at all my damned life and it didn't do neither me nor the preacher one damned bit of good."

Swynyard lifted the bottle to his nose and sniffed. He closed his eyes at the smell of the liquor, then touched the bottle's rim to his lips. For a second Starbuck was sure that the Colonel was going to tip the whiskey down his throat; then Swynyard lowered the bottle again. "I guess preaching didn't do you any good, Starbuck, because you're a preacher's son. Probably hurt you rather than helped. If a man tells you all your born days to keep away from the women and the whiskey, then what else will you look for when they let go of the leash?"

"Is that why you looked for them?" Starbuck asked.

The Colonel shook his head. "My father was no preacher. He went to church, sure, but he was no preacher. He was a dealer in slaves, Starbuck. That's what it said on our house-front. Said it in scarlet letters three feet high: 'Jos Swynyard, Dealer in Slaves.'" The Colonel shrugged at the memory. "Respectable people didn't come near us, Starbuck, not near a dealer in slaves. They sent their overseers and managers to buy the human flesh. Not that my father minded; he reckoned he was as respectable as any man in Charles City County. He kept a respectable household, I'll say that for him. None of us dared cross him. He was a flogger, you see. He flogged his slaves, his women, and his children." Swynyard went silent, staring down at the bottle. The sentry shifted his feet outside the tent, and pots clattered in the farmhouse kitchen as the servants cleaned up after Washington Faulconer's late supper. Swynyard shook his head sadly. "I treated my slaves bad."

"Yes, you did," Starbuck said.

"But he never flogged his dogs." Swynyard was thinking of his father again. "Never once, not in all his years." He smiled ruefully, then lifted the bottle to his nose and smelt it again. "It really ain't a bad kind of whiskey, judging by its smell," he said. "Have you ever drunk Scottish whiskey?"

"Once or twice."

"Me, too." Swynyard was silent for a few heartbeats. "I reckon I drunk just about everything a man can pour down his throat, but I once knew a man who called himself a connoisseur of whiskeys. A real connoisseur"—Swynyard rolled the word round his tongue—"and this connoisseur told me there wasn't nothing in the whole wide world he didn't know about whiskeys, and do you know which whiskey he reckoned was the best?"

"Tanglefoot?" Starbuck guessed.

Swynyard laughed. "Tanglefoot! Well, it works, I'll say that for tanglefoot. It works like a mule kick to the head, tanglefoot does, but it ain't the best liquor in the world, not if you want your mule kick to taste better than horse liniment. No, this man reckoned he'd drunk every kind of whiskey that this vale of tears has to offer us, and the best, the very best, the absolute real stuff, Starbuck, was whiskey from Ireland. Ain't that the strangest thing?"

"Maybe he was drunk when he tasted it?" Starbuck suggested.

Swynyard thought about that for a second, then shook his head. "No, I reckon he knew what he was saying. He was a rich man and rich folks don't get rich by being fools. At least they might, but they sure don't stay rich by being fools, and this man stayed rich. And he didn't drink much either. He just liked the taste, you see. He liked his whiskey, and he'd pay a rich man's price for Irish whiskey, but the guzzle he liked most of all was the widow's champagne. Clicquot!" He raised the whiskey bottle in a tribute to Madame Clicquot's champagne. "Have you ever drunk Veuve Clicquot?"

"Yes."

"Good for you. Be a sad thing to die without tasting the widow's champagne. But sadder still to die without salvation, eh?" Swynyard asked, but he seemed confused by the question. He stared at the bottle and again seemed about to drink from it, then, at the very last second, relented. "There was a time, Starbuck, when I could afford the widow's champagne morning, noon, and night. Could have watered my horse in it! Could have watered all my horses in it! I was rich."

Starbuck smiled but said nothing.

"You don't believe me, do you?" Swynyard said. "But there was a time, Starbuck, when I could have purchased Faulconer."

"Truly?"

"Truly," Swynyard said, gently mocking Starbuck's accent with the repetition. "I wasn't always a soldier. I left West Point, class of '29, forty-sixth in my class. You want to guess how many there were in West Point's class of '29?"

"Forty-six?"

Swynyard extended a pistollike finger at Starbuck and made a clicking noise of affirmation. "Forty-sixth out of forty-six. I didn't exactly distinguish myself. Fact is, twenty years later I was still no more than a captain, and I knew I wasn't going to rise any higher than a captain, and I wasn't ever going to kill anything more dangerous to the Republic than a Comanche or a Mexican. I always reckoned I might be a good soldier, but the whiskey made sure I never was. Then one night in '50 I got drunk and offered my resignation and that was the end of my career."