"Not one of them!" laughed he. "The nearest approach was a tinker who'd had German measles! Ha, ha! It's no good my wife reporting any more spies, and I just reminded her of that whenever she worried me, and pulled her leg a bit about me and Miss Holland being in the game together, and so it was all right till she got wind of a girl who was the image of the disappearing governess being here at the manse as Mr Burnett's sister, and then there was simply no quieting her till I'd taken the car and run over to see what there was in the story. Mind you, I didn't think there was a word of truth in it myself; but when I'd got here, by Jingo, there I saw Miss Holland's tweed coat in the hall! Now that's a funny kettle of fish, isn't it?" I didn't say so, but I had to admit that he was not so very far wrong. The audacity of the performance was quite worthy of Tiel, but its utter recklessness seemed not in the least like him. Had the vanishing governess's employer been any one less easy-going than Mr Craigie, how readily our whole scheme might have been wrecked! Even as it was, I saw detection staring me straight in the face. However, I put on as cool and composed a face as I could. "I understood that Miss Holland's brother had written to you about it," I said brazenly. "Oh! he is really her brother, is he?" said he, looking at me very knowingly. "Certainly." "He being Burnett and she Holland, eh?" "You have heard of half-brothers, haven't you?" I inquired with a condescending smile. "Oh, I have heard of them," winked Mr Craigie as good-humouredly as ever; "only I never happened to have heard before of half-sisters running away from a situation they'd taken without a word of warning, just whenever their half-brothers whistled." "Did Mr Burnett whistle?" I inquired, with (I hope) an air of calm and slightly superior amusement. "Some one sent her a wire, and I presume it was Mr Burnett," said he. "By Jingo!" He stopped suddenly with an air as nearly approaching excitement as was conceivable in such a gentleman. "What's the matter?" I asked a trifle anxiously. "One might get a good one about how to make a governess explode, the answer being 'Burn it!' By Jove, I must think that out." Before I could recover from my amazement at this extraordinary attitude, he had suddenly resumed his shrewd quizzical look. "Are you an old friend of Mr Burnett?" he inquired. "Oh, not very," I said carelessly. "Then perhaps you'll not be offended by my saying that he seems a rum kind of bird," he said confidentially. "In what way?" "Well, coming up here just for a Sunday to preach a sermon, and then not preaching it, but staying on as if he'd taken a lease of the manse--him and his twelve-twenty-fourths of a sister!" "But," I stammered, before I could think what I was saying, "I thought he did preach last Sunday!" "Not him! Oh, people are talking a lot about it."