l own a good bit of land over beyond the place called The
Forge. I've been having a look at it. It's run wild and rank, but it
might be reclaimed, I suppose. There is a depraved old squatter on the
place; lives in an old smoke-house. He actually remembered my
grandfather and what do you think, Morley"--Lans had turned his back
upon Martin, whose fixed stare and rigid pose disturbed him--"the old
codger actually told me half of a story the other half of which Aunt
Olive and I have often laughed over. Oddly enough it is a new and
another connecting link between you and me. We're throw-backs, old
fellow! Throw-backs and neither of us realizing it, but just naturally
coming together."

Sandy was looking at his father. Martin was pale and haggard and his
bony hands clutched his thin knees until the knuckles were strained and
white.

"Hertford!" whispered Martin; "Hertford!"

"Sure thing!" Lans gave a laugh. "See, I'm discovered even in this
disguise." He nodded toward the old man as one might toward an
imbecile who had shown a gleam of intelligence. "Lansing Hertford is
my real name; named for a grandfather just as you are, Sandy Morley.
You see I've patched the scraps together. It was your grandfather and
mine who were good pals way back in the musty ages. Some one played a
practical joke on them and the friendship went up in thin air. It's
left for you and me to pick up the pieces and--cement them together. I
wonder if you ever heard about the bottle of stuff my grandfather gave
your grandfather to bring home from--from Turkey, I think it was. Our
forebears were globe trotters in a day when to trot meant to make
history."

"I--I've heard it," Sandy muttered, his eyes still fixed on his
father's rigid face.

"Did you ever hear the--joke?"

"Joke? No! Was there a joke?"

"Yes. Your relative stopped in Paris--he was a jolly old buck
according to reports--and he hugged that everlasting bottle so close to
him that some fellows--sounds beastly frivolous to refer to those
dignified shades as fellows--but, anyway, some chaps from round about
here were doing gay Paree just then and they caught on to your
grandsire's devotion to that phial; they called it his Passion, his
mistress, and one night when he had left it hidden in his room they
found it, emptied out the contents--some kind of cologne it was--and
filled it with water! They never heard the outcome, but Aunt Olive and
I have often wondered how--