"Your—forefathers!" he gasped, while a weird familiarity and resemblance to—he knew not what—made Treadwell something tangible and actual at last.
"Yes. We still 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—some mountain girl probably enjoyed her smelling salts, or perfume, or whatever it was!"
Sandy could not move. He was spellbound, but Martin struggled to his feet and stood towering over Lans Treadwell, shaking as with ague.