The minister glanced from one to the other of us, puzzled. "Harold?" he said, turning over the word on his tongue. "Harold? That doesn't sound like an Indian name, does it? And----" he hesitated, "you speak wonderful English!" I saw the safest plan was to make a clean breast of it. He looked the sort of man one could trust on an emergency. "You have heard of the Ashurst will case?" I said, blurting it out suddenly. "I have seen something about it in the newspapers; yes. But it did not interest me: I have not followed it." I told him the whole truth; the case against us--the facts as we knew them. Then I added, slowly, "This is Mr. Harold Tillington, whom they accuse of forgery. Does he look like a forger? I want to marry him before he is tried. It is the only way by which I can prove my implicit trust in him. As soon as we are married, he will give himself up at once to the police--if you wish it, before your eyes. But married we must be. _Can't_ you manage it somehow?" My pleading voice touched him. "Harold Tillington?" he murmured. "I know of his forebears. Lady Guinevere Tillington's son, is it not? Then you must be Younger of Gledcliffe." For Scotland is a village: everyone in it seems to have heard of every other. "What does he mean?" I asked. "Younger of Gledcliffe?" I remembered now that the phrase had occurred in Mr. Ashurst's will, though I never understood it. "A Scotch fashion," Harold answered. "The heir to a laird is called Younger of so-and-so. My father has a small estate of that name in Dumfriesshire; a _very_ small estate: I was born and brought up there." "Then you are a Scotchman?" the minister asked. "I have never counted myself so," Harold answered, frankly: "except by remote descent. We are trebly of the female line at Gledcliffe; still, I am no doubt more or less Scotch by domicile." "Younger of Gledcliffe! Oh, yes, that ought certainly to be quite sufficient for our purpose. But then--the lady?" "She is unmitigatedly English," Harold admitted, in a gloomy voice. "Not quite," I answered. "I lived four years in Edinburgh. And I spent my holidays there while I was at Girton. I keep my boxes still at my old rooms in Maitland Street." "Oh, that will do," the minister answered, quite relieved; for it was clear that our anxiety and the touch of romance in our tale had enlisted him in our favour. "Indeed, now I come to think of it, it suffices for the Act if one only of the parties is domiciled in Scotland. Still, I can do nothing save marry you now by religious service in the presence of my servants--which constitutes what we call an ecclesiastical marriage--it becomes legal if afterwards registered; and then you must apply to the sheriff for a warrant to register it. But I will do what I can; later on, if you like, you can be remarried by the rites of your own Church in England." "Are you quite sure our Scotch domicile is good enough in law?" Harold asked, still doubtful.