The Spy in Black by J. Storer Clouston

It was in July of that same year that the Rev. Alexander Burnett was abashed to find himself inadvertently conspicuous. He had very heartily permitted himself to be photographed in the centre of a small group of lads from his parish who had heard their country's call and were home in their khaki for a last leave-taking. Moreover, the excellence of the photograph and the undeniably close resemblance of his own portrait to the reflection he surveyed each morning when shaving, had decidedly pleased him. But the appearance of this group, first as an illustration in a local paper and then in one that enjoyed a very wide circulation indeed, embarrassed him not a little. For he was a modest, publicity-avoiding man, and also he felt he ought to have been in khaki too.

Not that Mr. Burnett had anything really to reproach himself with, for he was in the forties, some years above military age. But he was a widower without a family, who had already spent fifteen years in a sparsely inhabited parish in the southeast of Scotland not very far from the Border; and ever since he lost his wife had been uneasy in mind and a little morbid, and anxious for change of scene and fresh experiences. He was to get them, and little though he dreamt it, that group was their beginning. Indeed, it would have taken as cunning a brain to scent danger in the trifling incidents with which his strange adventure began as it took to arrange them. And Mr. Burnett was not at all cunning, being a simple, quiet man. In appearance he was rather tall, with a clean-shaven, thoughtful face, and hair beginning to turn grey.