“I don’t agree with you at all, sir,” said the stranger energetically, “if you’ll pardon my saying so. In my experience—which is pretty wide, I may add—the best thinking is done in out-of-the-way places. I don’t say the showiest, mind you, but the best!”
Again the minister pardoned him without difficulty.
“Of course, one needs a change now and then, I admit,” continued the stranger. “But, my dear sir, whatever you do, don’t go and bury yourself in a crowd!”
This struck Mr. Burnett as a novel and very interesting way of putting the matter. He forgot all about the dinner awaiting him at the manse, and when the stranger offered him a very promising-looking cigar, he accepted it with pleasure, and leaned over the parapet beside him. There, with his eyes on the running water, he listened and talked for some time.
The stranger began to talk about the various charming out-of-the-way places in Scotland. It seemed he was a perfervid admirer of everything Scottish, and had motored or tramped all over the country from Berwick to the Pentland Firth. In fact, he had even crossed the waters, for he presently burst forth into a eulogy of the Windy Islands.
“The most delightful spot, sir, I have ever visited!” he said enthusiastically. “There is a peacefulness and charm, and at the same time something stimulating in the air I simply can’t describe. In body and mind I felt a new man after a week there!”
The minister was so clearly struck by this, and his interest so roused, that the stranger pursued the topic and added a number of enticing details.
“By the way,” he exclaimed presently, “do you happen to know a fellow-clergyman there called Maxwell? His parish is—let me see—Ah, Myredale, that’s the name.”
This struck Mr. Burnett as quite extraordinary.
“I don’t know him personally,” he began.
“A very sensible fellow,” continued the stranger impetuously. “He told me his parish was as like heaven as anything on this mortal earth!”
“He has just left it,” said Mr. Burnett.
The stranger seemed surprised and interested.
“What a chance for someone!” he exclaimed.
Mr. Burnett gazed thoughtfully through the smoke of his cigar into the brown water of the river below him.
“I have had thoughts of making a change myself,” he said slowly. “But of course they might not select me even if I applied for Myredale.”
“In the Scottish Church the custom is to go to the vacant parish to preach a trial sermon, isn’t it?” inquired the stranger.
The minister nodded. “A system I disapprove of, I may say,” said he.
“I quite agree with you,” said the stranger sympathetically. “Still, so long as that is the system, why not try your luck? Mind you, I talk as one who knows the place, and knows Mr. Maxwell and his opinion of it. You’ll have an enviable visit, whatever happens.”
“It is a very long way,” said Mr. Burnett.
“Don’t they pay your expenses!”
“Yes,” admitted the minister. “But then I understand that those islands are very difficult for a stranger to enter at present. The naval authorities are extremely strict.”
The stranger laughed jovially.
“My dear sir,” he cried, “can you imagine even the British Navy standing between a Scotch congregation and its sermon! You are the one kind of stranger who will be admitted. All you have to do is to get a passport—and there you are!”
“Are they difficult to get?”
The stranger laughed again.
“I know nothing about that kind of thing,” said he. “I’m a Lancashire lad, and the buzz of machinery is my game; but I can safely say this: that you will have no difficulty in getting a passport.”
Mr. Burnett again gazed at the water in silence.
Then he looked up and said with a serious face—
“I must really tell you, sir, of a very remarkable coincidence. Only a few days ago some unknown friend sent me a copy of a newspaper with a notice of this very vacancy marked in it!”
The Lancashire lad looked almost thunderstruck by this extraordinary disclosure.
“Well, I’m hanged!” he cried—adding hurriedly, “if you’ll forgive my strong language, sir.”
“It seems to me to be providential,” said Mr. Burnett in a low and very serious voice.
With equal solemnity the stranger declared that though not an unusually good man himself, this solution had already struck him forcibly.
At this point the minister became conscious of the distant ringing of a bell, and recognised with a start the strident note of his own dinner bell swung with a vigorous arm somewhere in the road ahead. He shook hands cordially with the stranger, thanked him for the very interesting talk he had enjoyed, and hurried off towards his overcooked roast.
The stranger remained for a few moments still leaning against the parapet. His jovial face had been wreathed in smiles throughout the whole conversation; he still smiled now, but with rather a different expression.
II
The Chauffeur
Mr. Burnett was somewhat slow in coming to decisions, but once he had taken an idea to do a thing he generally carried it out. In the course of a week or ten days he had presented himself as a candidate for the vacant church of Myredale, and made arrangements for appearing in the pulpit there on a certain Sunday in August. He was to arrive in the islands on the Thursday, spend the weekend in the empty manse, preach on Sunday, and return on Monday or Tuesday. His old friend Mr. Drummond in Edinburgh, hearing of the plan, invited him to break his journey at his house, arriving on Tuesday afternoon, and going on by the North train on Wednesday night. Accordingly, he arranged to have a trap at the manse on Tuesday afternoon, drive to Berwick and catch the Scotch express, getting into Edinburgh at 6:15.
He was a reticent man, and in any case had few neighbours to gossip with, so that as far as he himself knew, the Drummonds alone had been informed of all these details. But he had in the manse a very valuable domestic, who added to her more ordinary virtues
