d mourners were passing up the aisle it was observed
that from pew to pew the spectators shuddered with irrepressible awe
as some object hitherto concealed by the intervening figures came full
in sight. Many turned away their faces; others kept a fixed and rigid
stare, and a young girl giggled hysterically and fainted with the
laughter on her lips. When the spectral procession approached the
altar, each couple separated and slowly diverged, till in the centre
appeared a form that had been worthily ushered in with all this gloomy
pomp, the death-knell and the funeral. It was the bridegroom in his
shroud.

No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such a death-like
aspect. The eyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of a sepulchral lamp; all
else was fixed in the stern calmness which old men wear in the coffin.
The corpse stood motionless, but addressed the widow in accents that
seemed to melt into the clang of the bell, which fell heavily on the
air while he spoke.

"Come, my bride!" said those pale lips. "The hearse is ready; the
sexton stands waiting for us at the door of the tomb. Let us be
married, and then to our coffins!"

How shall the widow's horror be represented? It gave her the
ghastliness of a dead man's bride. Her youthful friends stood apart,
shuddering at the mourners, the shrouded bridegroom and herself; the
whole scene expressed by the strongest imagery the vain struggle of
the gilded vanities of this world when opposed to age, infirmity,
sorrow and death.

The awestruck silence was first broken by the clergyman.

"Mr. Ellenwood," said he, soothingly, yet with somewhat of authority,
"you are not well. Your mind has been agitated by the unusual
circumstances in which you are placed. The ceremony must be deferred.
As an old friend, let me entreat you to return home."

"Home--yes; but not without my bride," answered he, in the same hollow
accents. "You deem this mockery--perhaps madness. Had I bedizened my
aged and broken frame with scarlet and embroidery, had I forced my
withered lips to smile at my dead heart, that might have been mockery
or madness; but now let young and old declare which of us has come
hither without a wedding-garment--the bridegroom or the bride."

He stepped forward at a ghostly pace and stood beside the widow,
contrasting the awful simplicity of his shroud with the glare and
glitter in which she had arrayed herself for this unhappy scene. None
that beheld them could deny th