"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. CHAPTER 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.