himself.

Then the party took leave of their pastor, and went out by the back door
to enter their carriage.

Abel Force handed his wife, his eldest daughter and their guest into the
first carriage, which he entered after them, the party of four filling the
interior.

Le handed Miss Meeke and his two young cousins into the second carriage,
and followed them.

And the little procession left the churchyard, and took their way through
the grove to the turnpike road leading to Mondreer.

Meanwhile, the whole congregation of wedding guests lingered in the
church, and gathered into groups to talk over the strange events that had
just happened before their eyes.

They were not disappointed, those wedding guests. Far from that. They had
got so much more than they expected! They had not only seen the bride, the
bridegroom, the bridesmaids, the bride's mother, and all their dresses,
which had been made in New York, after the latest fashion; they had not
only seen the whole marriage ceremony performed, and noted the demeanor of
every one concerned in it, from the rector who read the rites to the
smallest bridesmaid who held the glove; they had not only seen all these
pageantries which they had expected to see, but they had seen a great deal
more than they had bargained for. They had witnessed the performance of a
startling drama in real life--the arrest of a marriage by the sudden
appearance of the would-be bridegroom's wife.

Now, they had got a great deal more than they had looked for, besides
having something to talk about all the rest of their lives.

They could not leave the church, though the dinner hour was at hand, and
most of them had far to go to reach their own homes.

They collected in little crowds to discuss the interruption.

"Who was the woman, did anybody know? When did she come to the
neighborhood? Had any one seen or heard of her before to-day?"

Such questions as these went around.

At last some one said that the stranger had been staying at Miss Sibby
Bayard's for the last week.

And immediately Miss Sibby Bayard became the center of attraction and the
most important person in the assembly.

The people crowded around her, plied her with a score of questions before
she could answer one.

"Yes!" she exclaimed, at last, impatiently. "Yes! She has been staying at
my house for five days past. She came from Califoundery, passenger in the
ship where Roland was third mate. Yes! The boy fetched her to