us
Thorkelson for murder, at the bedside of Magnus's lady-love. I could
imagine how N. V. Creede, whom I had already resolved I would retain to
defend Magnus, would thrill the jury In his closing speech for the
prisoner as the bar.

What I found was Elder Thorndyke and grandma and the widow, all standing
by Rowena's bed. The widow was holding the baby in her arms, but as I
came in she laid it in a chair and covered it up, as much as to indicate
that on this occasion the less seen of the infant the better. Magnus was
holding Rowena's hand, and the elder was standing on the other side of
the bed holding a book. Grandma Thorndyke stood at the bed's foot
looking severely at a _Hostetter's Almanac_ I had hanging on the
head-board. The widow was twittering around from place to place. When I
came in, Magnus motioned me to stand beside him, and as I took my place
handed me a gold ring. Rowena looked up at me piteously, as if to ask
forgiveness. Sometime during the ceremony we had the usual hitch over
the ring, for I had put it in my trousers pocket and had to find it so
that Magnus could put it on Rowena's finger. I had never seen a marriage
ceremony, and was at my wit's end to know what we were doing, thinking
sometimes that it was a wedding, and sometimes that it might be
something like extreme unction; when at last the elder said, "I
pronounce you man and wife!"

CHAPTER XIX

GOWDY ACKNOWLEDGES HIS SON

Now I leave it to the reader--if I ever have one besides my
granddaughter Gertrude--whether in this case of the trouble of Rowena
Fewkes and her marriage to Magnus Thorkelson, I did anything by which I
ought to have forfeited the esteem of my neighbors, of the Reverend and
Mrs. Thorndyke, or of Virginia Royall. I never in all my life acted in a
manner which was more in accordance to the dictates of my conscience.
You have seen how badly I behaved, or tended to behave in the past, and
lost no friends by it. In a long life of dealing in various kinds of
property, including horse-trading, very few people have ever got the
best of me, and everybody knows that this is less a boast than a
confession; and yet, this one good act of standing by this poor girl in
her dreadful plight degraded me more in the minds of the community than
all the spavins, thorough-pins, poll-evils and the like I ever concealed
or glossed over. We are all schoolboys who usually suffer our whippings
for things that should be overlooked; and the fact