A little later the clergyman reappeared, and approached her like an old acquaintance. By this time they were running close under the cliffs, and they gazed together up to the dizzy heights a thousand feet above their heads, where dots of sea-birds circled hardly to be distinguished by the eye, and then down to the green swell and bursting foam at the foot of that stupendous wall. In the afternoon sun it glowed like a wall of copper. For a few minutes both were instinctively silent. There was nothing to be said of such a spectacle.
Then Miss Holland suddenly asked—
"Do you live near the sea?"
"Not very," he answered with his air of finality.
But this time she persisted.
"What is your part of the country?"
"Berwickshire," he said briefly.
"Do you happen to know a minister there—a Mr Burnett?" she inquired.
"That is my own name," he said quietly.
"Mr Alexander Burnett?"