but the girl turned and laid a hand on his arm,
and her eyes livened with a glow of feeling and tenderness.

"Hit was right hyar thet we diskivered we loved one another," she said,
softly, "an' ef ye'd ever read thet book upstairs I reckon ye'd
onderstand. Our foreparents planted this tree hyar in days of sore
travail when they'd done come from nigh ter ther ocean-sea at Gin'ral
George Washington's behest, an' they plum revered hit from thet time
on."

She paused, looking up fondly into the magnificent fulness of branches
where now the orioles had hatched their brood and taught the fledglings
to fly, then her eyes came back and her voice grew rapt.

"Them revolutionary folk of our own blood bequeathed thet tree ter
us--an' we heired hit from 'em along with all thet's good in us. They
lays buried thar under hit, an' by now I reckon hits roots don't only
rest in ther ground an' rock thet's underneath hit--but in ther graves
of our people theirselves. Some part of them hes done passed inter thet
old tree, I reckon, ter give virtue ter hits sap an' stren'th. Thet's
why thar hain't no other place ter be married at."

The July morning of their wedding day dawned fresh and cloudless, and
from remote valleys and coves a procession of saddled mounts, ox-carts,
and foot travellers, grotesque in their oddly conceived raiment of
festivity, set toward the house at the river's bend. They came to look
at the bride, whose beauty was a matter of local fame, and for their
first inquisitive scrutiny of the stranger who had wooed with such
interest-provoking dispatch and upon whom, rumour insisted, was to
descend the mantle of clan leadership, albeit his blood was alien.

But the bridegroom himself lay on his bed, the victim of a
convalescent's set-back, and it seemed doubtful whether his strength
would support him through the ceremony. When he attempted to rise, after
a night of returned fever, his muscles refused to obey the mandates of
his will, and Uncle Jase Burrell, who had arrived early to make out the
license, issued his edict that Cal Maggard must be married in bed.

But at that his patient broke into defiant and open rebellion.

"I aims ter stand upright ter be wed," he scornfully asserted, "ef I
don't nuver stand upright ergin! Ask Dorothy an' her gran'pap an' Bas
Rowlett ter come in hyar. I wants ter hev speech with 'em all together."

Uncle Jase yielded grudgingly to the stronger will and within a few
minutes those who