"Come off?"

Gage answered by an aggrieved nod, as though he held his friend responsible for the mishap. "Got my foot caught in the iron and was dragged ever so far."

"Awkward," Peckover commented. "Still you can't put that down to the peerage. n.o.blemen's feet don't swell, although their heads may."

"I don't," returned Gage snappishly. "Only the Quorn t.i.tle doesn't seem exactly a mascot."

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 b.u.mping 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 b.u.mped 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 a.s.sured 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

"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."

"Oh, no," Peckover protested, pulling himself together and a.s.suming the boldest face he could summon up. "It wasn't my fault you drank that doctored wine, which I intended for my own consumption."

"Dare say not," Quorn returned uncompromisingly. "Admitting for the sake of argument that was an unfortunate mistake, how about you and your friend annexing my place and t.i.tle?"

Peckover's face showed bland surprise. "Me and my friend taking your place and t.i.tle? What do you mean?"

"Oh," replied Quorn with impatient sarcasm, "we are dense this evening.

It may astonish you, Mr. Alias Gage, but I rather fancy Staplewick Park and Towers belong to Lord Quorn."

"Who suggested they didn't?" asked Peckover wonderingly.

"I'd like to see the man, that's all," retorted Quorn. "And," he resumed, "I'm rather under the impression that I'm Lord Quorn."

"I dare say," was the prompt rejoinder. "But it doesn't follow you are that n.o.bleman."

"What?" he roared.

"Don't make a noise," said Peckover, with a touch of dignity; "the servants aren't used to it."

"I say I am Lord Quorn," the other repeated with less volume but more intensity. "And you know it."

"But Lord Quorn says he's Lord Quorn," argued the wily Peckover with maddening plausibility. "That's all I know. I'm not the Heralds'

College."

"You're a pair of frauds," cried Quorn.

"Naturally, if you're the rightful peer," was the bland reply. "But we don't know it, nor anybody else."

"Don't they?"

"Except yourself, I was going to say, and a lady and gentleman who have come all the way from Australia to stick to it--and you."

The hit told. Quorn's manner visibly weakened.

"What--you've had the nuisances up here--what is their infernal game?"

he asked, darkly apprehensive.

"Simple enough," replied Peckover, beginning to feel the courage he had hitherto simulated. "The fair Lalage's game is to be Lady Quorn, or to know the reason why. And she has brought over dear old Carnaby as an extra note of interrogation."

"Oh! What persevering devils they are," Quorn observed uneasily. "And what do they say to your friend who calls himself Lord Quorn?"

"Say?" Peckover's native smartness was quick to turn the situation to advantage. "Why, their idea is that one Lord Quorn's as good as another and failing one the other will do nicely."

Quorn gave a long whistle. "Why, you don't mean to say that Lal Leo is going for your friend?"

"She is, though, by George," was the blunt answer. "Only, of course, she hasn't got the hold on him she would have on you. And that's where Carnaby comes in."

Quorn looked at him searchingly, but was fain to accept the statement.

Besides which, it tallied with his idea of the Leonine methods. "Well, that's a queer go," he said, and then fell into a puzzled silence.

Presently he burst out with a question, not unnatural under the circ.u.mstances. "Who the devil is the thief who has the cheek to call himself Lord Quorn?"

Peckover shrugged. "For aught I know to the contrary he is Lord Quorn," he replied blandly.

"Rats!" cried the dispossessed one wrathfully. "It's a put-up job between you and him."

"My good sir----"