“Perhaps if you give yourself the trouble to look up in my face you may recognize me, as well as my right to be here,” said Ran calmly. Gentleman Geff stared. “You should remember me. It has not been so long; only since the second of last April that we parted company in the Black Woods of California,” continued Ran. Then the criminal’s face blanched, his jaw fell, his eyes started, he stared with growing horror for a moment, then reeled, and must have fallen but that he was caught in the strong arms of Longman, who supported him to a high-backed armchair and sat him down in it, where he seemed to fall into a state of stupefaction. The awful shock of this meeting had not sobered him—he was too far gone in drunkenness for that; but it had reduced him to a state of imbecility. Meanwhile Mr. Cassius Leegh, who had been engaged outside doing all the duties of his patron, seeing to the luggage, paying off the carryall, and even taking care of his sister, now strutted into the room with the lady on his arm, his head thrown back, his nose in the air, and altogether with a fine manner of scorn. He was not so drunk as his patron; he was only drunk enough to be a very great man, indeed; but not to be a very violent one. “What is the meaning of this irregularity?” he loftily demanded. “We did not expect company!” “We did,” said Ran with a touch of humor in his tone. “Pray, who are you, sir?” demanded Leegh, throwing up his head. “Ask your companion there,” replied Ran with a wave of his hand toward the panic-stricken object in the armchair. “Hay!” exclaimed Leegh, turning to his patron. “What in the dev—what on earth does all this mean? Who are all these people?” Gentleman Geff opened his mouth, gasped, rolled his eyes and sank into silence. “Can’t you speak, man? What the dev—what is the matter with you? And what is all this infer—this confusion about?” angrily demanded Leegh. Gentleman Geff gasped two or three times, rolled his eyes frightfully and replied: “It is the day of judgment! And the dead—the murdered dead—have risen to bear witness against me!—have left their graves to cry ‘blood for blood’!” he shrieked; and then his eyes stared and became fixed, his jaw fell and his face blanched. “Poor idiot!” exclaimed Mr. Leegh in extreme disgust. “I never saw his so drunk as this. If he goes it at this pace he will soon come to the end of life. I find I must take command here and clear the house. Have I your authority to act for you, sister?” he inquired in a whisper of the woman on his arm. “Yes—yes,” she faltered faintly; “but take me first to a chair or sofa. I feel as if about to faint. Oh, what does is all mean?” “It means that our friend here,” he replied, pointing to the collapsed criminal in the chair, “has delirium tremens. And ‘has ’em bad,’ as the old costermonger used to say of his cousin,” he added as he placed his sister in a large, cushioned armchair, into which she sank exhausted.