flames mounted high in the air and showed our little party, sitting or half lying about it on blankets.  Old Dan, sitting on a great chunk of wood, his lap full of cats, his violin beside him, and his usual bodyguard of cats and dogs around him, went far back into his youth and let us know—­what probably he had told no other being since he broke those ties—­why he left the home, the heritage, and the name of his ancestors.

He had been playing on his violin, and then, putting it down, had begun to tell us about some hunting adventure.  The red light danced over his wrinkled, weather-beaten face and scraggly, grizzled beard; and as I considered his large, well-shaped head and strongly marked features, it seemed to me there was something familiar in his countenance.  In his voice a peculiar intonation—­I had noticed it many times before—­teased me with suggestions of a voice heard somewhere else.

And presently I remembered.

He turned his face toward me, the firelight fell bright and strong upon it, that peculiar tone in his voice sounded at just the same instant, and there flashed upon me the memory of a scene in Boston two years before.  It was in Faneuil Hall, and a great mass of eager, enthusiastic faces was turned toward the platform, where stood a member of one of Massachusetts’ old and distinguished families.  His speech, full of persuasive fire, had welded his whole audience into one personality that, for the time being, at least, felt as he felt and thought as he thought.  And the voice of the orator, which had impressed me by reason of a certain peculiar intonation, was like this man’s voice, and his face had in it much that was like the face of Old Dan.

I spoke of the resemblance, and Old Dan at first drew back within himself.  Then he began to question me eagerly about the man.  And presently he had let us know who he was.

“Yes,” he said, “you are right.  There is a strong resemblance between us, or there was when we were young.  I have not seen him for more than forty years.  He is my brother—­younger than I. You know what the family has been in New England.  There has not been a generation of it for a hundred, yes, a hundred and fifty years, that has not made its influence felt either in Massachusetts or the nation.  I cut loose from it before I was twenty, and they have known nothing about me since.  In fact, they think me dead—­they thought I died then, and I do not intend they shall ever know that I did not.  This is the first time since I left that anybody has known my real name, and you ’ll do me a favor if you never speak of it to any one else, here or elsewhere.  I have not always been known by the same name since then, but what difference does that make?  When a man leads as many different lives as I have done, he has a right to more names than one or two.