"Ef there'd hev been more," he said. "A name ain't much when there ain't nothin' to tack on to it. It was curi's enough, but it'd hev to be follered up an' found out. Ef he was only what he 'lowed to be--'tain't nothin' to hide that a man's wife dies an' leaves a child. I don't b'lieve thar wasn't nothin' to hide--but it'd hev to be _proved_--an' proved plain. It's mighty aggravatin'." One night, seeing a crowd pouring into a hall where a lecture was to be delivered, he had lingered about the entrance until the carriage containing the lecturer drove up. Here was something to be had for nothing, at all events--he could have a look at the man who was making such a name for himself. There must be something in a man who could demand so much a night for talking to people. He managed to get a place well to the front of the loitering crowd on the pavement. The carriage-door was opened and a man got out. "That ain't him," said a bystander. "That's Latimer. He's always with him." The lecturer descended immediately after his companion, but Stamps, who was pushing past a man who had got in front of him, was displaying this eagerness, not that he might see the hero of the hour, but that he might look squarely at the friend who had slightly turned his face. "Gosh!" ejaculated the little hoosier, a minute later. "I'd most swear to him." He was exasperatedly conscious that he could not quite have sworn to him. The man he had seen nineteen years before had been dressed in clumsily made homespun; he had worn his black hair long and his beard had been unshaven. Nineteen years were nineteen years, and the garb and bearing of civilisation would make a baffling change in any man previously seen attired in homespun, and carrying himself as an unsociable hoosier. "But I'd most sw'ar to him--most." Stamps went through the streets muttering, "I'd most _swar_!" It was but a few days later that Latimer saw him standing on a street corner staring at him as he himself approached. It was his curious intentness which attracted Latimer. He did not recognise his face. He had not seen him more than once in the days so long gone by, and had then cast a mere abstracted glance at him. He did not know him again--though his garments vaguely recalled months when he had only seen men clothed in jeans of blue, or copperas brown. He saw him again the next day, and again the next, and after that he seemed to chance upon him so often that he could not help observing and reflecting upon the eager scrutiny in his wrinkled countenance. "Do you see that man?" he remarked to Baird. "I come upon him everywhere. Do you know him?" "No. I thought it possible you did--or that he recognised one of us--or wanted to ask some question." After his conversation with big Tom De Willoughby, Latimer heard from Baird the story of the herds and their indefatigable claimant. "He comes from the Cross-roads?" said Latimer. "I don't remember his face."