"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. "I reckon I can tell you how it--turned out," he said, while his poor old chin quivered as if the effort was almost more than he could endure. "It war this-er-way. He came home to The Hollow, Sandy's grandfather, an' he brought the bottle of--water! Oh! my God--and them as opened the bottle--found out and began--to whisper! They all whispered an' nudged ole Sandford Morley out of life an' inter his grave. They-all hinted that he war a thief, a betrayer of his friend, but he war that upright and clean that he war deaf to whispers an' he--he didn't know the language of dirty slurs and off looks from them as war once his friends! He went to his grave without knowing what had edged him outer the respect of his neighbours. Then the lie grew an' grew an' took the life an' souls outer us-all an' made us po' whites--us as war as good an' better than your kin!" A terrible fury was rising in Martin, and Sandy, unable to clarify the situation, paused before entering the fray. "Then Sandy here, he got his call an' rose up to save us-all. Out in the world he found--you. You've come here--for what? for what?"