d time to his Harry!

One may well conceive that such would have been an inauspicious moment
for Parson Dale's theological scruples to have stopped that marriage,
chilled all the sunshine it diffused over the village, seen himself
surrounded again by long sulky visages,--I verily believe, though a
better friend of Church and State never stood on a hustings, that,
rather than court such a revulsion, the squire would have found
jesuitical excuses for the marriage if Riccabocca had been discovered to
be the Pope in disguise! As for the stocks, its fate was now irrevocably
sealed. In short, the marriage was concluded,--first privately,
according to the bridegrooms creed, by a Roman Catholic clergyman, who
lived in a town some miles off, and next publicly in the village church
of Hazeldean.

It was the heartiest rural wedding! Village girls strewed flowers on the
way; a booth was placed amidst the prettiest scenery of the Park on the
margin of the lake--for there was to be a dance later in the day. Even
Mr. Stirn--no, Mr. Stirn was not present; so much happiness would have
been the death of him! And the Papisher too, who had conjured Lenny
out of the stocks nay, who had himself sat in the stocks for the very
purpose of bringing them into contempt,--the Papisher! he had a lief
Miss Jemima had married the devil! Indeed he was persuaded that, in
point of fact, it was all one and the same. Therefore Mr. Stirn had
asked leave to go and attend his uncle the pawnbroker, about to undergo
a torturing operation for the stone! Frank was there, summoned from Eton
for the occasion--having grown two inches taller since he left--for the
one inch of which nature was to be thanked, for the other a new pair of
resplendent Wellingtons. But the boy's joy was less apparent than that
of others. For Jemima, was a special favourite with him, as she would
have been with all boys,--for she was always kind and gentle, and made
him many pretty presents whenever she came from the watering-places;
and Frank knew that he should miss her sadly, and thought she had made a
very queer choice.

Captain Higginbotham had been invited; but to the astonishment of
Jemima, he had replied to the invitation by a letter to herself, marked
"private and confidential."

"She must have long known," said the letter, "of his devoted attachment
to her! motives of delicacy, arising from the narrowness of his income
and the magnanimity of his sentiments, had alone prevented