“The utmost that I dared to hope for was the curacy under the new rector, whoever he should be! But the living! It is more than I ever dreamed of or deserved! Yet will I, with the Lord’s help, do my utmost for the parish.” What Ran might have replied was cut short with some sudden violence. First by the heavy rumbling and tumbling of some clumsy carryall over the rough drive as it drew up to the front of the Hall and stopped; then by loud and angry tones of voice; then by a resounding peal of knocks on the door which seemed to reverberate through the entire building. The arrival was an embodied storm that threatened to dash in the entire front of the house. In the library John Legg sprang up and bolted the door against the uproar, and then sat down by his trembling wife. In the drawing-room all was excitement and expectation. “It’s him!” exclaimed old Dandy, with his few spikes of white hair rising on end around his bald crown. “It’s him! Straight from the pit of fire and brimstone, and possessed of the devil and all his demons!” In the hall the frightened footmen hastened to throw open the front door. Gentleman Geff burst in, cursing and swearing in the most appalling manner, and threatening every one in his house with instant discharge, death and destruction, for having kept him waiting at Chuxton so many hours and not having sent his coach and four and mounted servants to meet him! So, raving like a madman whose frenzy is heightened by _mania a potu_, he broke into the drawing-room in the midst of the assembled company. Ran Hay arose and advanced down the room to meet him. CHAPTER XXIV AT BAY Randolph Hay advanced to meet the violent intruder. Gentleman Geff was still raging and threatening. “How do you do, Mr. Geoffrey Delamere?” coolly inquired Ran, calling the man of many aliases by the name by which he had known him in California. Gentleman Geff stopped suddenly and drew himself up with drunken arrogance. In the quiet, low-voiced, well-dressed young gentleman who stood before him, with clear, pale complexion, neatly trimmed hair and mustache, who wore light kid gloves, and had a rosebud in his buttonhole, he did not recognize the rough, rollicking, sunburned and shock-headed lad who had befriended him at Grizzly Gulch, and whom he himself had shot down, robbed and left for dead, to be devoured by wolves in the Black Woods of the gold State, and whose name and inheritance he had stolen. “Who in thunder and lightning are you, you villain? And what the fire and brimstone are you doing here, in my house, you rascal?” he fiercely demanded, and without waiting for an answer he fell to cursing and swearing in the most furious manner, ending with: “If you don’t get out of this in double-quick I’ll have you kicked out of doors and into the horse pond, you scoundrel!”