"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." CHAPTER 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."