insisted that Josiah should help her, and also that he should stand
forty yards away, for reasons connected with her ankles, and he found it
rather trying to follow out these contradictory orders. However, Melinda
reached the ground at last, and the pair started in a carriage that had
been waiting just around a bend in the road, in company with the
Methodist minister. Their plan was to drive to the next town and there
to be married, but it happened that one of the Smith boys, being
restless, got up in the night, and, looking out of the window, saw the
ladder standing at Melinda's window. In about twenty minutes after the
young people had started, the whole Smith family and their shot-guns
were following the runaways in a waggon, and gaining on them fast.

"The Methodist minister, whose hearing was unusually good, heard the
sound of hoofs before Josiah noticed it, and told the young people that
there was not the least doubt that they were pursued, and would be
overtaken in a very few minutes. 'And then, you know,' he added, 'the
chances are that, being Baptists, they will shoot first, and ask for
explanations afterwards. The only thing for us to do is to get the
marriage ceremony over before they come up. Then they will see that
opposition is of no use, and will listen to reason.'

[Illustration: "THEY WERE MARRIED."]

"Josiah and Melinda at once consented, and the parson, noticing a little
clearing in the woods on the left hand side of the road, and a flat sort
of tombstone standing in the middle of it, said that he would stand on
that stone and marry his young friends so quick that it would make their
hair curl. He was particularly glad to meet with a handy tombstone, for
he said that a tombstone was the next thing to a church, and that to be
married by the side of a tomb would be almost as solemn as to be married
in a minister's study. So the party hastily descended; the parson
mounted the stone; Josiah and Melinda joined hands in front of him, and
they were married, and the parson had kissed the bride and pocketed his
fee just as the Smiths' waggon drove up and the Smith boys cocked their
guns and covered the party. But the parson was wide awake. He had his
revolver out and old man Smith covered before anybody had taken aim at
him, but, instead of shooting, he remarked that he was a minister of the
blessed gospel of peace; that there was no necessity for bloodshed, and
that he would blow a hole through old Smith u