In ten minutes after Geoff was whirling along the quiet country road on his way home. It was like a dream to him that all this should have happened since he last drove between those hedgerows, and he had the half-disappointed, half-injured feeling of one who has not carried out an adventure to its final end. He was worn out too, and excited, and he did not like giving up Lily into the hands of her father. Had it been Miss Musgrave he would have felt no difficulty. It was chilly in the early morning, and he buttoned up his coat to his chin, and put his hands in his pockets, and let his groom drive, who had evidently something to say to him which could scarcely be kept in till they got clear of the station. Geoff had seen it so distinctly in the man’s face, that he had asked at once, “Is all right at home?” But he was too tired to pay much attention to anything beyond that. When they had gone on for about a quarter of an hour, the groom himself broke the silence. “I beg your pardon, my lord----” “What is it?” Geoff, retired into the recesses of his big coat, had been half asleep. Then the man began an excited story. He had heard a scuffle and a struggle at a point of the road which they were about approaching when on his way to meet his master. Wild cries “not like a human being,” he said, and the sound of a violent encounter. “I thought of the madman I was telling your lordship of yesterday.” “And what was it?” cried Geoff, rousing up to instant interest; upon which the groom became apologetic. “How could I leave my horse, my lord?--a young beast, very fresh, as your lordship knows. He’d have bolted if I’d have left him for a moment. It was all I could do, as it was, to hold him in with such cries in his ears. I sent on the first man I met. A man does not grapple with a madman unless he is obliged to----”