Varney did not answer. The name had started remote memories to working, and, very slowly, returning comprehension advanced to meet them. He and old Orrick had been standing together on a woodland road. They were hunting for something. An 1812 penny and valuable. That was it. Before that, he had stood a long time near a green gate somewhere, looking at a pair of dark-blue eyes. He remembered distinctly what merciless eyes they were, though something in a far corner of his mind recalled that he had once, oddly enough, associated them with pleasant things. Then, like one rounding a sharp corner in a driveway, his memory came face to face with everything; and he turned his head to the wall. But there was no escape from that insistent voice, so eager for an explanation. A hand fell upon his shoulder, shook it almost roughly. "Don't let yourself drop off again. Here! You want another drink?" "No, I'm quite all right now--thank you." To prove it, and to make ready to get away where he could be quiet, he performed the herculean task of opening his eyes. A tall man was bending over him, an anxious expression on his handsome face. More than the liquor, more even than the jostling hand upon his shoulder, the look of that face, so strange yet so familiar, braced Varney to action. The two pairs of gray-blue eyes, so oddly matched in tint and shape, stared into each other steadily. Presently Varney dragged his feet around to the floor, with difficulty, as was natural to their thousand tons of weight, and taking hold of a chair pulled himself up on them. He raised his hands, slowly and cautiously, to his head. Good! It was still there. The impression that it had left his shoulders and was floating around in the air a foot or two above them thus turned out to be an illusion. "There!" he heard the author saying briskly. "A little effort was all you needed, as I thought." "That was all. Thank you. You must have pulled me in from the road, didn't you? It was very kind. You have just arrived in Hunston--I believe?" "I came only this morning," his good Samaritan replied. "In the nick of time, it seems, to be of assistance. And you?" he added, with a slight bow. "You are a native here, perhaps?" "Do you remember me," asked Varney quietly, "when you were here twelve years ago?" Mr. Stanhope selected a cigarette from a large open box on the table, lit it carefully, took several long inhalations. "No," he said easily. "But for that matter, I fear that I remember few of my boyhood acquaintances in Hunston. But--this man--Orrick, you said?--has there been bad blood between you two for some time then?" "No," said Varney, simply. "He struck me, I believe, because he thought I was you?" "_What_!" cried the author with overdone surprise.