left glove in church, which would have announced her engagement as loudly as though Mr. Dishart had included it in his pulpit intimations.  Religion, however, stopped her when she had got the little finger out, and the Misses Finlayson, who sat behind and knew she had an itchy something inside her glove, concluded that it was her threepenny for the plate.  As for Gavinia, like others of her class in those days, she had never heard of engagement rings, and so it really seemed as if Mr. McLean must call on the doctor after all.  But “No,” said he, “I hit upon a better notion to-day in the Den,” and to explain this notion he produced from his pocket a large, vulgar bottle, which shocked Miss Ailie, and indeed that bottle had not passed through the streets uncommented on.

Mr. McLean having observed this bottle afloat on the Silent Pool, had fished it out with his stick, and its contents set him chuckling.  They consisted of a sheet of paper which stated that the bottle was being flung into the sea in lat. 20, long. 40, by T. Sandys, Commander of the Ailie, then among the breakers.  Sandys had little hope of weathering the gale, but he was indifferent to his own fate so long as his enemy did not escape, and he called upon whatsoever loyal subjects of the Queen should find this document to sail at once to lat. 20, long. 40, and there cruise till they had captured the Pretender, alias Stroke, and destroyed his Lair.  A somewhat unfavorable personal description of Stroke was appended, with a map of the coast, and a stern warning to all loyal subjects not to delay as one Ailie was in the villain’s hands and he might kill her any day.  Victoria Regina would give five hundred pounds for his head.  The letter ended in manly style with the writer’s sending an affecting farewell message to his wife and little children.

“And so while we are playing ourselves,” said Mr. McLean to Miss Ailie, “your favorite is seeking my blood.”

“Our favorite,” interposed the school-mistress, and he accepted the correction, for neither of them could forget that their present relations might have been very different had it not been for Tommy’s faith in the pass-book.  The boy had shown a knowledge of the human heart, in Miss Ailie’s opinion, that was simply wonderful; inspiration she called it, and though Ivie thought it a happy accident, he did not call it so to her.  Tommy’s father had been the instrument in bringing these two together originally, and now Tommy had brought them together again; there was fate in it, and if the boy was of the right stuff McLean meant to reward him.

“I see now,” he said to Miss Ailie, “a way of getting rid of our fearsome secret and making my peace with Sandys at one fell blow.”  He declined to tell her more, but presently he sought Gavinia, who dreaded him nowadays because of his disconcerting way of looking at her inquiringly and saying “I do!”

“You don’t happen to know, Gavinia,” he asked, “whether the good ship Ailie weathered the gale of the 15th instant?  If it did,” he went on, “Commander Sandys will learn something to his advantage from a bottle that is to be cast into the ocean this evening.”