Geoff did not hesitate; he rang the bell hastily, and ordered his dog-cart to be ready at once, and wrote two or three lines of explanation to his mother. And he ordered the servant, who stared at his strange companion, to bring some food and wine. But Bampfylde shook his head. “Not so,” he said; “not so. Bit nor sup I could not take here. We that once made this house desolate, it’s not for us to eat in it or drink in it. You’re o’er good, o’er good, my young lord; but I’ll not forget the offer,” he added, the water rushing to his eyes. He stood in front of the light stretching his long limbs in the languor of exhaustion, a smile upon his face. “You have overdone yourself, Bampfylde. You are not fit for any more exertion. What more can you do than you have done? I’ll send out all the men about the house, and----” “Nay, but I’ll go to the last--as long as I can crawl. Mind you the young ones,” he said; “and for all you’re doing, and for your good heart, God bless you, my young lord!” It seemed to Geoff like a dream when he found himself standing alone in the silent room among his books, with neither sight nor sound of any one near. Bampfylde disappeared as he had come, in a moment, vanishing among the shrubberies; and the young man found himself charged with a commission he did not understand, with a piece of dirty paper in his hand, upon which an address was rudely scrawled. What was he to do at this school, a day’s journey off, about which he knew nothing? He would have laughed at the wild errand had he not been too deeply impressed by his visitor’s appearance and manner to be amused by anything thus suggested. But wild as it was, Geoff was resolved to carry it out. Even the vaguest intimation of danger to Lilias would have sufficed to rouse him, but he had scarcely taken that thought into his mind. He could think of nothing but Bampfylde, and this with a pang of sympathy and interest which he could scarcely explain to himself. As he drove along towards the Stanton station, the first from Pennington, his mind was entirely occupied with this rough fellow. Something tragic about him, in his exhaustion, in the _effusion_ of his weakness, had gone to Geoff’s heart. He looked eagerly for traces of him--behind every bush, in every cross-road. And to increase his anxiety, the servant who accompanied him began to entertain him with accounts of a madman who had escaped from an asylum, and who kept the country in alarm. “Has he been seen anywhere? has he harmed any one?” Geoff asked, eagerly. But there were no details to be had; nothing but the general statement. Geoff gave the man orders to warn the gamekeepers and out-door servants, and to have him secured if possible. It was scarcely loyal perhaps to poor Bampfylde, who had trusted him. Thus he had no thought but Bampfylde in his mind when he found himself in the train, rushing along on the errand he did not understand. It was a quick train, the one express of the day; and even