This was a proposition which the vendor of that equivocal dignity did not feel himself in a position to traverse. "How did you get out of it?" he asked sympathetically. "The iron? I shouldn't have been taken out alive, with the brute bumping me over the ground fit to drive my spine out at the top of my skull," Gage replied in a victimized tone, "if it hadn't been for a chap that came along in the nick of time and held him up." "Lucky," remarked Peckover. "Going to settle a few hundred thou. on him?" he inquired playfully. "Not exactly. But I'm going to give him a billet on the estate. Poor devil, out-at-elbows; superior sort for all that. Knows all about farming, he tells me. He'd better have that glib old thief Treacher's place at the farm. Turn him in there, and let him make the best job he can of it. He has given me an idea of how he'd work the land, which seems pretty sensible, and at the worst he can't rob me more than Treacher has been doing." "Good idea," Peckover agreed, not wildly interested in the arrangement. "Yes," said Gage. "After all, the fellow saved my life. I owe him a chance of showing he can be honest as well as useful. Now, as I'm considerably bumped about and only fit for a hot bath, I'd be glad if you'd just trot the fellow down to the farm, give Treacher his notice, and show his successor how the land lies. We can put him up somewhere till Treacher clears out." "All right," Peckover responded with a yawn. "Anything to oblige. Where is the party?" "He's in the gun-room. I told Bisgood to get him something to eat. Poor fellow seemed half starved. His name's Jenkins. Treat him kindly. He has done us both a service," he added significantly. "All serene," Peckover assured him with another yawn. "I'll handle him tenderly. In the gun-room, eh?" As Peckover opened the gun-room door, Gage's preserver was standing with his back to it, scrutinizing a sporting print. "Up, Jenkins," was Peckover's facetious salutation and mode of attracting his attention. Next moment it was down Peckover, for he staggered back and subsided helplessly into a low chair as, in the stranger who turned quickly, he recognized with a gasping cry the real Lord Quorn, whom he had believed to be lying poisoned and forgotten in Great Bunbury churchyard. CHAPTER XXV For several seconds neither man spoke; Peckover, sprawling limply as he fell, staring with distended, apprehensive eyes at Quorn who, master of the strange situation, regarded him with a certain grim amusement. "Hope you are having a good time, Mr.--Gage, is it?--or something else, which for the moment has slipped my memory?" Peckover's wits were rapidly recovering from the shock of dispersal caused by the unexpected bomb which had fallen on them. "Curious we should meet again like this," he said with a sickly smile. "Very," was the pointed response. "And a trifle awkward, I should fancy, for you."