If ever I'd seen a confirmed bachelor, I would have thought the Reverend Wakefield was it.

The Reverend Wakefield looked fondly after the boy as he trooped off toward the kitchen.

It's always two hundred years in Highland stories, said the Reverend Wakefield's voice in memory.

He turned then, to look at the towering shelves of books that lined three walls of the study, holding the late Reverend Wakefield's collection of Jacobite arcana.

The same could not be said for the eighteenth-century table in the late Reverend Wakefield's study, whose spindly legs wobbled and creaked alarmingly beneath their unaccustomed burden.

On the battered surface of the late Reverend Wakefield's desk lay a sheaf of yellowed papers, foxed and browned at the edges.

Roger, the Reverend Wakefield's son.

The wall exemplified the Reverend Wakefield's mind.

The faint whiff of Borkum Riff and spilled whisky brought back the Reverend Wakefield as not even his father's wall of trivia could do.

More than ever, I regretted my promise to Frank that had kept me from writing to the Reverend Wakefield.