ies' cabin. Coming
out, the foot of the companion was immediately opposite, and beyond
stretched the saloon. At the far end of this sat the clergyman, and at
the sight of him Miss Holland paused for a moment at the foot of the
ladder and looked at him with a face that seemed to show both a little
amusement and a little wonder. He sat quite by himself, with a bundle
of papers on the table at his elbow. One of these was in his hand, and
he was reading it with an air of extraordinary concentration. He had
carelessly pushed back his black felt hat, and what arrested her was
the odd impression this produced. With his hat thus rakishly tilted,
all traces of his clerical profession seemed mysteriously to have
vanished. The white dog-collar was there all right, but unaided it
seemed singularly incapable of making him into a conventional minister.
Miss Holland went up on deck rather thoughtfully. The little mail boat
was now far out in the midst of a waste of waters. The ill-omened
tideway was on its best behaviour; but even so, there was a constant
gentle roll as the oily swell swung in from the Atlantic. Ahead, on
the starboard bow, loomed the vast island precipices; astern the long
Scottish coast faded into haze. One other vessel alone was to be
seen--a long, low, black ship with a single spike of a mast and several
squat funnels behind it. An eccentric vessel this seemed; for she
first meandered towards the mail boat and then meandered away again,
with no visible business on the waters.

The girl moved along the deck till she came to the place where her
suit-case had been stowed. Close beside it were two leather kit-bags,
and as she paused there it was on these that her eyes fell. She looked
at them, in fact, very attentively. On each were the initials "A.B.",
and on their labels the legend, "The Rev. Alex. Burnett." She came a
step nearer and studied them still more closely. A few old
luggage-labels were still affixed, and one at least of these bore the
word "Berwick." Miss Holland seemed curiously interested by her
observations.

A little later the clergyman reappeared, and approached her like an old
acquaintance. By this time they were running close under the cliffs,
and they gazed together up to the dizzy heights a thousand feet above
their heads, where dots of sea-birds circled hardly to be distinguished
by the eye, and then down to the green swell and bursting foam at the
foot of that stupendous wa