fast, but it
was quite clear enough to see (or be seen), and at last I caught one
more glimpse of that horse and trap--turning off the road just where I
expected. And then I was crawling back with more haste than dignity.

It was "him"! And he had only arrived to-night. If it had not been
for my accident, in what a nice dilemma I should have been landed!
Never did I bless any one more fervently than that awkward sailor who
had let my cycle slip, and as for the wave of salt water which wet it,
it seemed to have sprung from the age of miracles.

The trouble of my discovery and its possible consequences still
remained, but I thought little enough of that now, so thankful did I
feel for what had _not_ happened. And then I stretched myself out
again on the heather, waiting with all the patience I could muster for
the falling of night.

PART II.

A FEW CHAPTERS BY THE EDITOR

I.

THE PLEASANT STRANGER.

It was in July of that same year that the Rev. Alexander Burnett was
abashed to find himself inadvertently conspicuous. He had very
heartily permitted himself to be photographed in the centre of a small
group of lads from his parish who had heard their country's call and
were home in their khaki for a last leave-taking. Moreover, the
excellence of the photograph and the undeniably close resemblance of
his own portrait to the reflection he surveyed each morning when
shaving, had decidedly pleased him. But the appearance of this group,
first as an illustration in a local paper and then in one that enjoyed
a very wide circulation indeed, embarrassed him not a little. For he
was a modest, publicity-avoiding man, and also he felt he ought to have
been in khaki too.

Not that Mr Burnett had anything really to reproach himself with, for
he was in the forties, some years above military age. But he was a
widower without a family, who had already spent fifteen years in a
sparsely inhabited parish in the south-east of Scotland not very far
from the Border; and ever since he lost his wife had been uneasy in
mind and a little morbid, and anxious for change of scene and fresh
experiences. He was to get them, and little though he dreamt it, that
group was their beginning. Indeed, it would have taken as cunning a
brain to scent danger in the trifling incidents with which his strange
adventure began as it took to arrange them. And Mr Burnett was not at
all cunning, being a simple, quiet man. In appearance he