"Good day," said the stranger courteously, and moved off promptly as he spoke.
"I wonder who will that minister be?" said Mr Craigie to himself as he strolled back. "It's funny I never saw the man before. And I wonder, too, where he was going?"
And then it occurred to him as an odd circumstance that the minister had started to go back again, not to continue as he had been walking.
"That's a funny thing," he thought.
He had hardly got back to his smoking-room when Miss Holland appeared, dressed to go out, in hat and tweed coat, and dragging, of all things, her brown suit-case. It seemed to be heavily laden.
She smiled at him confidentially, as one fellow-conspirator at another.
"Do you mind giving me a hand with this?" said she.
"Hullo!" cried the laird. "What's this—an elopement? Can you not wait till I pack my things too? The minister's in no hurry. I've just been speaking to him."
It struck him that Miss Holland took his jest rather seriously.
"The minister?" said she in rather an odd voice. "You've spoken to him?"