"If you do not marry me," continued this extraordinary young woman, in tones which harrowed his heart-and yet which were not so harrowing as her music, by a very great deal, "I shall die before your eyes."

The Rev. Alan still had his hand to his head. He looked round him with bewildered, short-sighted eyes. Curiously enough his aunt still had her face turned in the opposite direction.

"I-I'm sure-" he stammered.

"Of what?"

"I-I shall be happy-"

"Happy!"

The music ceased, and that for the sufficiently good reason that the pianist rose from her seat and flung her arms about the curate's neck. He said something, but what it was was lost in the ample expanses of Miss Vesey's breast.

"Madam," she cried, addressing Miss Macleod, "your nephew has promised to marry me! He has said that he will be happy."

Miss Macleod, who did not happen just then to be looking in the opposite direction, smiled grimly. Owing to the peculiarity of her physical configuration everything about her was grim-even her smile.

"I am glad to hear it," she observed.

The Rev. Alan struggled himself free from the lady's powerful embrace. His distress was tragic in its intensity.

"This-this is some extraordinary-"

"Happiness!" cried the lady, and again she clasped him in her arms. "Your happiness is mine! It has been my life-long dream to be married to a clergyman; is not my father one already?"

At that moment the father referred to entered the room.

"What's this?" he cried, as a father naturally would cry on seeing his daughter with a stranger in her arms.

The young lady, however, promptly relieved his mind.

"Father, let me present to you my future husband."

"I-I do protest," screamed the frenzied curate.

"You do protest, sir! What do you protest?" The father's voice was terrible, so was his manner. Apparently all his paternal instincts had not been destroyed by dipsomania. "You come to this house, sir, a perfect stranger, sir; you assault my daughter, sir; you take her in your arms."

This was, perhaps, strictly speaking, a perversion of the truth; but at this moment Miss Macleod offered her interposition.

"You need be under no concern. My nephew is a gentleman. I was a witness of his proposal. If he behaves as a dastard to your daughter, I will deliver him to your righteous vengeance then. In the meantime, perhaps you and your daughter will accompany us home to luncheon. We can arrange the preliminaries of the marriage during the course of the meal."

III. – A CURIOUS COURTSHIP

"Miss Bayley, I am in a position of the extremest difficulty."

Miss Bayley was not only the Rev. Alan Macleod's parishioner; she was, so to speak, his co-curate, at Swaffham-on-Sea. That delightful village boasted of a rector who found that the local air did not agree with him, so he spent most of his time in the South of France. The Rev. Alan was, therefore, to all intents and purposes, the head and front of all Church matters in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately the greater part of the population-what there was of it-was dissenting, and that part of it which was not dissenting was even worse-it was Episcopalian! – the lowest of the low! The curate, therefore, found himself in the position of the sower who sows his seed in barren soil. His congregation not unfrequently consisted of two-the verger and Miss Bayley.

The curate had returned to Swaffham, and it was this faithful feminine flower of his flock he was addressing now.

"Oh, Mr Macleod, I am so sorry! Can I help you? Is it spiritual?"

The curate shook his head. He had not fallen quite so low as that. The idea of his coming to a person in petticoats for help in spiritual matters struck him as too absurd. He could scarcely excuse Miss Bayley.

"Can you think that I, your priest, should come to learn of you?"

Miss Bayley looked down.

"I was wrong," she murmured. She told herself that she ought to have remembered that none of the curates ever was half so cocksure about that kind of thing as the Rev. Alan. But then, she was so anxious to lend him a hand in anything.

"An error owned is half atoned."

He meant this for a little pleasantry-but he was an awkward man, even when he trifled. He hesitated. He was conscious that he had come for assistance in a matter quite as delicate as anything which appertained to Church government.

"Miss Bayley." He cleared his throat. "I-I have an aunt." The abashed Miss Bayley signified that she had heard him mention that fact before-which she had, about half a dozen times a day. "She is not one of us." Miss Bayley sighed; she felt that she was expected to sigh. "She is of the world worldly. Her thoughts are fixed on temporalities. Being possessed of great riches, to which I am the natural heir, the continual desire of her life is that I-I should marry."

The Rev. Alan stammered a little at the end. Miss Bayley perceptibly started. That was the continual desire of her life too. She wondered if it was going to be gratified at last.

"That you should marry? Oh, Mr Macleod!"

"I need not tell you that, in such a matter, her desire would not weigh with me in the least. The true priest is celibate."

Miss Bayley's heart fluttered-she did not go with him so far as that.

"But-if she were to disinherit you?"

"Do you know me so little as that? Nothing would please me better than that she should."

He clasped his hands in a kind of ecstasy. The lady, whose father was the parish doctor, and who knew what it was to have to dress on nothing a year, was almost tempted to think that the curate was a fool. But as she could scarcely express the thought aloud, she was wise enough to hold her peace. The gentleman went on rather awkwardly. The travelling was getting difficult, in fact.

"To-eh-such lengths has-eh-she-she-allowed her desire to-eh-carry her, that-eh-it-it has resulted in-eh-involving me in-eh-complications of an excessively disagreeable kind."

Miss Bayley's imagination realised the worst at once.

"Are you engaged?" she cried.

"She-she says I am."

"She says you are!" The lady was on the verge of tears-the blow was sudden. "Mr Macleod, I have something which I have to do upstairs."

She felt that if she stayed in the room she might disgrace herself 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 summer. Besides-women attach themselves to poodle dogs! – she 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 cake! Oh, Mr Macleod, I never thought 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.

"My beloved!" she cried.

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. Under the circumstances he kept his presence of mind very well-for 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 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. – HIS AUNT EXPLAINS

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 pull him by the tail when they want him to follow his snout. That is what I have done with you. I heard all about the girl and about your philanderings together, and how you thought it was the Church she worshipped, when the curate was the object of her adoration. Don't you ever believe about single young women worshipping the Church when there's a bachelor inside it! I heard she was a decent body, so I said that, sooner than leave you, the last of the Macleods of Pittenquhair, a barren stock, the girl should have you.

"The thing was how-with you and your 'celibate-priest' stuff and nonsense. But Providence helps those who help themselves-so 'Miss Vesey' tumbled from the skies.

"I saw her first at a thought-reading séance. She did some very funny things, and she plays the piano like an angel. She certainly had a gift that way, for, with the aid of her music, she played all sorts of tricks on the fools who were there. I thought to myself, what tricks she might play on you if you came within her range! Then, all of a sudden, the whole thing was hatched in my brain. I made her acquaintance. I took her home to supper. Afterwards, inspired by the largest quantity of champagne I ever saw a woman drink, she told me all about herself. She was the most candid young woman I ever met.

"She was married-to an unfrocked parson. But, according to her own account, she was more than his match. A perfect limb! And as clever as she was wicked-one of those wicked women who are born, not made, for she was not yet twenty-one. I told her all about you. I said that if, through her, you married the doctor's daughter at Swaffham-on-Sea, she should have five hundred pounds upon your wedding-day. She came into the scheme at once. So we arranged it all together.

"Among other things, her husband was one of those scamps who pose, in the advertisement sheets, as distressed clergymen whose large families depend for sustenance on their being able to dispose of some article or other at one-third of its cost price. Just then his line was apostle spoons-which he bought for five shillings and sold for twenty. I was to summon you up to town. I was to bully you about your marriage. And then, when I had thoroughly upset you-which, I explained to her, it was the easiest thing in the world to do-I was to call your attention to his advertisement of the apostle spoons. I was to march you off then and there to buy them. When I had got you into her house I was to leave the rest to her.

"She was to pose as her husband's daughter, which she was young enough to be-in years, at any rate. She said that if I brought you to her in a state of agitation and confusion bordering on imbecility-which I undertook to do-and if you were the sort of man I had described to her, within half an hour she would induce you to use language which might be construed into an offer of marriage. Then, with her husband's aid, she would so drive you to distraction as to send you flying into Miss Bayley's arms as into a harbour of refuge.

"I need not describe to you how she succeeded-though we had neither of us bargained that you would be quite the fool you were. When I heard of your eloping with the doctor's daughter the instant 'Miss Vesey' put in an appearance on the scene, I owned that I had at last attained to one article of faith-an implicit belief in the infinite capacity for folly to be found in the human animal in trousers.

"It is unnecessary, under these circumstances, to say that I congratulate you upon your marriage. I hope that your wife will be a sensible woman, and present you, without loss of time, with a son-or, better still, with half a dozen, so that I may have an opportunity of finding at least one among them who shall not be quite such a fool as his father. – Your affectionate aunt,

"JANET MACLEOD (of Pittenquhair)."

When Miss Macleod's nephew had finished reading this letter, he wiped the perspiration from his brow. Then he wiped his glasses. Then he sat thinking, not too pleasantly. Such a letter was a bitter pill to swallow. Then, not desirous that his aunt's epistle should be read by his wife, he tore it into strips, and burned them one by one. He told himself that he would never forgive his aunt-never! and that, willingly, he would never look upon her face again.

But to so resolve was only to add another to his list of follies. Within twenty-four hours of his marriage-fortunately for him-his wife had proved that the grey mare was once more the better horse. Now she had got her man, at last, the strong vein of common sense that was in her came to the front. When Miss Macleod came to see her, she received her with open arms; and, as a matter of course, where she led her husband followed.

To one thing Alan had been constant-to the doctrine of the "celibate priest." According to him, a "priest" married was not a "priest" at all. Immediately after his marriage, therefore, nobody offering the least objection, he quitted the "priesthood." He is now a gentleman of leisure. Probably with a view of providing him with some occupation his wife bids fair to come up to his aunt's standard of a sensible woman, and to present him with half a dozen sons.

There is, therefore, no fear of the Macleods of Pittenquhair becoming-like certain volcanoes-extinct, at least in the present generation.