us
suffering! Every good man suffers vicariously."

"These are deep things, Mr. Wilkinson, too deep for the average parson,
who doesn't trouble himself much with facts unless he find them
confirmed by his antiquated articles."

"Yet my attention has been drawn to them by thoughtful clergymen of
different denominations."

"Well, I don't think I'll trouble the clergymen to-day, thoughtful or
not thoughtful. I've had my sermon in the open air, a sort of walking
camp meeting. What did they call these fellows who studied on the move?"

"Peripatetics."

"That's it; we're a peripatetic church."

"But, without praise or prayer or scripture lessons, which are more
important than the sermon."

"Oh, you can do the praise and prayer part in a quiet way, as a piece of
poetry says that I learnt when I was a boy. It ends something like
this:--

So we lift our trusting eyes
To the hills our fathers trod,
To the quiet of the skies,
And the Sabbath of our God.

That's pretty, now! Hallo! here's the doctor!"

Coristine came up at the gallop, and reported that all the people he
expected to find at the Carruthers' were there, Grinstun man, Mrs.
Carmichael, and Marjorie, included, all except Miss Du Plessis, who was
staying at a house three miles this side of the farm, helping to nurse a
sick neighbour.

"Has Rawdon seen her?" asked the detective. The lawyer did not know, but
suggested that they could find out by calling at the house of Mrs.
Talfourd, the sick woman, on the way.

"How far are we from it?" enquired Mr. Nash.

"About a mile or a mile and a-half," replied Coristine.

"Then, Mr. Wilkinson, let us stir our stumps a bit. Can you sing or
whistle? There's nothing like a good tune to help a quick march."

"Yes; sing up, Wilks," cried The Cavalry; and the dominie started
"Onward, Christian Soldiers," in which the others joined, the detective
in a soft falsetto, indistinguishable from a half-cultivated woman's
voice. He was combining business with pleasure, dissimulation with
outward praise.

"Pretty good that for a blooming young lady of five foot ten," remarked
Mr. Nash, at the end of the hymn.

"Blooming young ladies with a tonsure," replied Coristine, gazing on the
detective's momentarily uncovered head, "are open to suspicion."

"Wait till you see my hair." chuckled the ex-priest.

The mile and a-half was soon covered, and the trio stood before a roomy
farm-house. A boy, not unlike To