"Voice too," the little man continued. "Especially when you repeated the name of the inn--the Rothwell Arms." Harding laughed. "Upon my word! The Rothwells have left me more of the family property than I was aware of." "Then there was your destination. Who but a Rothwell would ever want to stay at Mitchelhurst?" "I see. I appear to have betrayed myself in a variety of ways." The discovery of his name seemed to have given him a little more ease of manner of a defiant and half-mocking kind. "What, is there something more?" he inquired, as his new acquaintance recommenced, "And then----" "Yes, enough to make me very sure. You wear a ring on your little finger which your mother gave you. She used to wear it thirty years ago." "True!" said Harding, in a tone of surprise. "You knew my mother then?" "As I say--thirty years ago. She is still living, is she not? And in good health, I trust?" "Yes." The young man looked at his ring. "You have a good memory," he said, with an inflection which seemed to convey that he would have ended the sentence with a name, had he known one. The little gentleman took the hint. "My name is Herbert Hayes." He spoke with careful precision, it was impossible to mistake the words, yet there was something tentative and questioning in their utterance. The young man's face betrayed a puzzled half-recognition. "I've heard my mother speak of you," he said. "But you don't remember what she said?" "Not much, I'm afraid. It is very stupid of me. But that I have heard her speak of you I'm certain. I know your name well." "There was nothing much to say. We were very good friends thirty years ago. Mrs. Harding might naturally mention my name if she were speaking of Mitchelhurst. Does she often talk of old days?" "Not often. I shall tell her I met you." Barbara stood by, wondering and interested, glancing to and fro as they spoke. At this moment she caught her uncle's eye. "By the way," he said, "I have not introduced you to my niece--my great-niece, to be strictly accurate--Miss Barbara Strange." Harding bowed ceremoniously, and yet with a touch of self-contemptuous amusement. He bowed, but he remembered that she had seen him slide down a muddy bank on his back by way of an earlier introduction. "Mr. Rothwell Harding, I suppose I should say?" the old man inquired. "No. I'm not named Rothwell. I'm Reynold Harding." "Reynold?" "Yes. It's an old name in my father's family. That is," he concluded, in the dead level of an expressionless tone, "as old a name as there is in my father's family, I believe." "I suppose his grandfather was named Reynold," said Mr. Hayes to himself. Aloud he replied, "Indeed. How about Adam?" Harding constrained himself to smile, but he did it with such an ill grace that Mr. Hayes perceived that he was a stupid prig, who could not take a joke, and gave himself airs.