As it chanced—a chance for which she would never forgive herself—Sally Pope, who had not been apprised of the exact date when he was likely to return, had gone on her yearly holiday to visit her relations. Only a strange young housemaid kept house and received Oliver, taking in good faith his assertion that he was her master. The dreary reception had, as a compensation, a certain relief for the traveller; but he was not long left to his own thoughts. He had hardly eaten the meal which his servant improvised in a state of consternation, with regard to a future searching investigation and sharp condemnation of all deficiencies by old Sally, when he became aware, as he was in the act of strolling half mechanically across the court, to his former smoking station in the mill gallery, that he was threatened already with visitors from Copley Grange. A lady and gentleman were walking across the park, and making straight for the picturesque old mill. Oliver groaned under this ill-timed manifestation of the popular admiration shared between show places and show people, and prepared to make himself scarce. He stopped short in his retreat, and faced the intruders, the moment he recognised that they were Mr. and Mrs. Amyott. The couple were the most put out by the encounter, for they had clearly not expected to meet the miller in his own domain. It might be that the squire was but partially informed of his young wife’s former familiarity with Friarton Mill as well as with Copley Grange Farm, and that he had proposed to take advantage of the fine afternoon by making her better acquainted with what was, still more than the artistic almshouses, a charming æsthetic advantage belonging to his place. In that case Mrs. Amyott might have had some difficulty in evading the proposal, or she might have been fain, on her side, to get over the first visit to Friarton Mill in a new character, as early as possible, in the absence of its master.