by crying before his face. The Rev. Alan was dismayed at the idea of her leaving him.

"Miss Bayley, I do entreat you not to go. You do not understand me in the least. I do not say I am engaged; quite―quite the other way." "Oh, Mr. Macleod!"

The affair might have its comic side for a looker-on, but it was tragic enough for her. If she did not get this man, whom could she get? At Swaffham-on-Sea eligible bachelors were as rare as snow in Besides-women attach themselves to poodle dogs !—she

summer.

really liked the man.

The curate continued:

"The the circumstances really are, I think, the most extraordinary I ever heard of. I should be almost induced to believe that it had all happened in a dream were it not for a letter that I have in my pocket."

"From whom is the letter?"

"From-from Miss Vesey."

"Is that the lady you are engaged to?"

"En-engaged to? I hadn't made her acquaintance ten minutes before she said I had proposed to her."

"She would not have said so unless you had."

"Miss Bayley, do you not know me better than that? Nothing was further from my mind! The proposal came from her."

"I have heard of women proposing to men! And I suppose you accepted her?" She was strongly tempted to add, "You are imbecile enough for anything!" But even in that hour of her trial she refrained.

"I can only assure you that I had no such intention in any words. I may have used-words which came from me unawares, owing to the state of confusion I was in on receiving such a proposition from a total stranger."

Miss Bayley turned away. She thought she saw exactly how it was. "I can only offer you my congratulations. I do not know why you enter into all these details. When is the marriage to be?" "Marriage !"

"Yes, marriage! I hope you will send me a piece of the cake! Oh, Mr. Macleod, I never thought that you would behave to me like this!"

Miss Bayley fairly succumbed. She buried her face in her hands and ran, crying, from the room. Mr. Macleod, left behind, was thunderstruck. He realised what any man, with even a little knowledge of the world, would have seen from the first.

"She loves me ! What have I done?" He sank in a chair

and he too buried his face in his hands. Presently he rose again. "Poor, pure soul! She is the best woman in the world!" He twisted his hands together with a nervousness which was peculiarly his. "I have done wrong in the sight of God and man!"

How he got out of the house he never knew ; but he did get out, and through the front door too. He set off walking towards the rectory, where, in the absence of the rector, he lived rent free. He had not gone twenty yards from the house when a gloved hand slapped him smartly on the shoulder.

"Alan !"

He turned. There was Miss Vesey and her father! He could hardly believe that it was, but it was. The lady was brilliantly attired, perhaps as a set-off to her father. That worthy gentleman resembled nothing so much as what, in former days, they would have called a broken-down hedge parson. He was evidently meant for a clergyman, sartorially. That is, the conception was clear enough, it was the result which was unsatisfactory.

"Your hand, my son !"

He held out his hand after the manner of the fathers in old comedy. But unfortunately he did not wait for the curate to give him his hand, he seized it, and shook it up and down-pump-handle fashion. And while the father was engaged in this edifying performance, the daughter flung her arms about the curate's neck.

If there was any there to behold, they beheld what they had never seen before-the curate embraced as a curate never had been embraced in public, at Swaffham-on-Sea.

"Let me go!" he stammered.

And in due time the lady let him go. he kept his presence of mind very well-for

Under the circumstances him.

"You-you'll find the rectory about a quarter of a mile in front of you, just round the bend in the road. If-if you'll excuse me, I have a most important visit I must make."

Miss Vesey's father slapped him heartily-too heartily !-upon the back, again after the fashion of the comedy fathers.

"Don't put yourself out for us, my boy! Don't neglect your duties, as is too often the case with the young. Tell us where the bottles are, and we'll make ourselves snug till you come in."

The curate did not tell them where the bottles were; in fact, there was only a solitary bottle of cod-liver oil in the house, and probably the speaker's thoughts did not incline that way; but they went on to the rectory alone. Miss Vesey waved her parasol, and

kissed her glove to him so long as she was in sight. He stood watching them till they were round the bend in the road, then he re-entered the doctor's house.

This time he passed through the back door, straight into the kitchen. "Lauk, sir!" cried the maid-of-all-work; "who'd a thought of seeing you?"

The Rev. Alan addressed her in a fever of excitement.

"Tell Miss Ellen I must speak to her at once."

He went into the parlour, and the maid of all work went upstairs. Presently she returned with a message.

"If you please, sir, Miss Ellen's compliments, and she's got a headache."

Mr. Macleod was pacing up and down the room, very much in the manner of the carnivora about feeding time at the Zoo.

"A headache !"

He took his note-book from his pocket. Tearing out a page he scribbled on it these two or three strongly worded lines.

"I entreat you to see me, if you ever called yourself my friend. It is a matter of life or death; almost, I would venture to say, of heaven or hell.-A. M."

The maid of all work bore these winged words above. The result was presently visible in the form of the lady herself. She entered with the air of a martyr, conscious of her crown.

"You are my priest. I have come."

"It is not as a priest I have summoned you, Ellen, but as a friend."

The use of the christian name was perhaps unintentional, but the lady marked her sense of the familiarity at once.

"Sir ! "

Her lip curled, possibly with scorn. His answer was sufficiently startling. "Ellen, I entreat you to be my wife."

"Your wife, Mr. Macleod! Are you mad?"

"I am-nearly! I shall be quite if you don't accede to my request at once."

"I think you are mad now. How dare you insult me! when from my bedroom window I just saw you kissing that creature in the street."

"I kissed her ! She kissed me."

"It's the same thing."

"It's not!" Which was true enough-it was a different thing entirely. "Ellen, can you not see that I was never more in earnest in my life. If you do not marry me, something tells me that that

woman will, and for all I know that wretched parent of hers may be the occupant of a dissenting pulpit; he looks disreputable enough for anything. What with her and her father, and my aunt, I am as a reed in their hands. I do entreat you-be my wife."

The offer was not put in the most flattering form. Still, it was an offer.

"If you really want me," began Miss Bayley.

"Want you! I want nothing so much in all the world."

"And if you think I can be of use to you in the parish"Parish! it's not the parish I'm thinking of, it's-it's that wretched woman."

Miss Bayley did not like this way of putting it at all.

"I will consider what you say, Mr. Macleod, and will let you have an answer-say in a month."

"In a month!" the curate was aghast. "I want your answer now. Ellen, I do entreat you, if you do not wish to see me disgraced in the face of all the world, promise to be my wife."

"But, Mr. Macleod, you do not even pretend to care for me.” "Care for you! I care for you more than I ever cared for any woman yet."

Then in that case "-the lady was a little coy-"it shall be just as you will."

At this point the ordinary lover would have taken her in his arms, and here would follow a number of crosses denoting what we have seen termed "osculatory concussions." But the Rev. Alan was not an ordinary lover at all. He continued his frenzied pacing round the room.

"It is not enough to promise to be my wife, you must be my wife."

"Mr. Macleod, what do you mean?"

"Miss Bayley-Ellen-those two persons are at the rectory, awaiting my arrival at this moment. She is a disreputable woman, he is a ruffianly man. They are quite capable of coercing me into some dreadful entanglement from which I may find it impossible to release myself. My only hope lies in an immediate marriage."

"I do not understand you in the least."

"Then let me endeavour to make myself quite plain. I will not return to the rectory; you will put on your hat and jacket and come up at once with me to town. I will get a special licence. And we will be married before anyone has an inkling of what it is that we intend."

"Mr. Macleod, is it an elopement you propose?"

"Ellen, it is."

The little man was shaking like a leaf.

"I never heard of such a thing in my life."

"Nor did I dream that I should ever make such a proposition to a living woman-but needs must when the devil drives."

The lady began to cry.

"Alan, I must say you have not a flattering way of putting things."

"What avails flattery at such a moment as this. For heaven's sake, don't cry. I have heard you say yourself that you don't believe in long engagements."

"Yes-but when one has not been engaged five minutes!"

"What matters five minutes or five years, when one has once resolved. It seems to me that when there is nothing to gain by waiting-but everything to lose-the sooner one marries the better."

There was something in this; she told herself that he was not such a nincompoop after all when he was driven to bay-poor, dear little man! Amidst her tears she thought of other things. A regular marriage would involve a trousseau. She was quite sure that she should get no money out of her father for that-for the best of reasons, he had none to give. And then she knew her curate. She thought it quite possible that if that other woman—the brazen hussy !—did once get him in her hands, he might at any rate be lost to her. Better a good deal than to run the risk of such an end to all her hopes as that!

The end of it was that the Rev. Alan Macleod and Miss Bayley went up together by the next train which left the neighbouring station-eight miles off-for town.

IV.

Shortly after his marriage Alan Macleod received the following curious letter from his aunt :

"Nephew Alan,-Don't talk fiddlesticks about giving up the church because you're married, though I never could understand why you ever became a parson, unless it was because your father was the devil's own.

"I meant all along that you should marry the doctor's daughter. Of course, as a Macleod of Pittenquhair, you might have had the best in the land, but then-what a Macleod you are! Have you ever heard of the Irishman's pig? they want him to follow his snout. I heard all about the girl you.

VOL. CCLXX. NO. 1925.

They pull him by the tail when That is what I have done with and about your philanderings

H H