rties"--his sonorous voice resounded through the awful
stillness--"Will the parties--about--to be joined--in holy
wedlock--now--come forward?"

As Lovell then arose and walked, with an automatic hitch in his legs,
across the room to his bride, there was about him all the stiffness and
pallor of the grave without its smile of peace.

"Lovell and Nancy"--arose the deep intonation--will you--now--join hands?

It was a warm strong hand in the green kid glove. Its grasp might have
sent a thrill of life through Lovell's rigid frame, for when the minister
inquired:

"And do you, Lovell, take this woman?" etc., etc.

Lovell bent his body, moved his lips, and replied in a strange, far-away
tone, "Yes'm, _I_ think so. _I_ do, certainly."

But when the question was put to the bride, she, Nancy, promised to take
Lovell to be her wedded husband, to love and cherish, yes, and to cleave
to, with a round, full "I do," that left no possible room for doubt in
the mind of any one present, and seemed to send back the flood of frozen
terror to Lovell's veins.

Lovell and Nancy were pronounced man and wife, and Nancy then divested
herself of her bonnet and gloves, and joined in the festivities which
followed with a hearty good-will, that proved her to be quite at home
among the Wallencampers, and won at once their affection and esteem. The
manner, particularly, in which she carried beans from her plate to her
mouth, gracefully balanced on the extreme verge of her knife, as an
adroit and finished work of art, provoked the wonder and admiration of
all those whose beans sometimes wandered and fell off by the way.

And all the while, Mrs. Barlow's adjectives flowed in a full and copious
stream.

"Oh, Lovell had been so wild," she said to me. "Oh, dreadful! But didn't
I think he looked like a husband now? So quick, too! Oh, yes, wasn't it
beautiful! Abbie Ann said he looked as though he'd been a husband fifteen
years!"

After the ceremony, Lovell had taken his pipe and retired a little from
the active scenes which were being enacted around him.

I saw him, as I was going away, standing in the door and looking out upon
the bay. I held out my hand to him, in passing. "I congratulate you, Mr.
Barlow," I said. Lovell put his hand to his mouth and coughed slightly
several times, as though he were striving to think of the polite thing to
say. Then he replied: "I--I--ahem! I wish you the same, Miss Hungerford,
_I_ do, certainly."

Lovell