tream ran laughing on its way to the lake, Natas sat under
the shade of a spreading tree-fern. In front of him was a small table
covered with a white cloth, on which lay a roll of parchment and a
copy of the Hebrew Scriptures.

At this table, facing Natas, stood the betrothed pair with their
witnesses, Natasha for Radna, and Arnold for Colston, or Alexis
Mazanoff, to give him his true name, which must, of course, be used
on such an occasion. In a wide semicircle some four yards off stood
all the members of the little community, Louis Holt and his faithful
servitor not excepted.

In the midst of a silence broken only by the whispering of the warm,
scented wind in the tree-tops, the Master of the Terror spoke in a
kindly yet solemn tone--

"Alexis Mazanoff and Radna Michaelis, you stand here before Heaven,
and in the presence of your comrades, to take each other for wedded
wife and husband, till death shall part the hands that now are
joined!

"Your mutual vows have long ago been pledged, and what you are about
to do is good earnest of their fulfilment. But above the duty that
you owe to each other stands your duty to that great Cause to which
you have already irrevocably devoted your lives. You have already
sworn that as long as you shall live its ends shall be your ends, and
that no human considerations shall weigh with you where those ends
are concerned. Do you take each other for husband and wife subject to
that condition and all that it implies?"

"We do!" replied the lovers with one voice, and then Natas went on--

"Then by the laws of our Order, the only laws that we are permitted
to obey, I pronounce you man and wife before Heaven and this company.
Be faithful to each other and the Cause in the days to come as you
have been in the days that are past, and if it shall please the
Master of Destiny that you shall be blessed with children, see to it
that you train them up in the love of truth, freedom, and justice,
and in the hatred of tyranny and wrong.

"May the blessings of life be yours as you shall deserve them, and
when the appointed hour shall come, may you be found ready to pass
from the mystery of the things that are into the deeper mystery of
the things that are to be!"

So saying, the Master raised his hands as though in blessing, and as
Alexis and Radna bent their heads the slanting sunrays fell upon the
thickly coiled white hair of the new-made wife, crowning her shapely
head like a diadem of si