rriage joy and thy new hopes, and the light of a perfect
love will be over it."

In the meantime life was full of new delights to Thora. Wonderful
things were happening to her every day. The wedding dress was here.
Adam Vedder had brought her a pretty silver tea service, Aunt
Barbie--now Madame Vedder--had remembered her in many of those
womanwise ways, that delight the heart of youth. Even Dominie Macrae
had sent her a gold watch, and the little sister-in-law had chosen for
her gift some very pretty laces. Rich and poor alike brought her their
good-will offerings, and many old Norse awmries were ransacked in the
search for jewels or ornaments of the jade stone, which all held as
"luck beyond breaking."

The present which pleased Thora most of all was a new wedding-dress,
the gift of her mother. The rich ivory satin was perfect and peerless
in its exquisite fit and simplicity; jewels, nor yet lace, could have
added nothing to it. Sunna had brought it with her own toilet. In
fact, she was ready to make a special sensation with it on the first
of January, for her wedding garment as Thora's bridesmaid was nothing
less than a robe of gold and white shot silk, worn over a hoop. She
had been wearing a hoop all winter in Edinburgh, but she was quite
sure she would be the first "hooped lady" to appear in Kirkwall town.
Thora might wear the bride veil, with its wreath of myrtle and
rosemary, but she had a pleasant little laugh, as she mentally saw
herself in the balloon of white and gold shot silk, walking
majestically up the nave of St. Magnus. It was so long since hoops had
been worn. None of the present generation of Kirkwall women could ever
have seen a lady in a hoop, and behind the present generation there
was no likelihood of any hooped ladies in Kirkwall.

Thora had no hoop. Her orders had been positively against it and
unless Madame Vedder had slipped inside "the bell" she could not
imagine any rival. As she made this reflection, she smiled, and then
translated the smile into the thought, "If she has, she will look like
a haystack."

Now Ian's military suit in his department had been of white duff or
linen, plentifully adorned with gilt buttons and bands representing
some distinctive service. It was the secret desire of Ian to wear this
suit, and he rather felt that Thora or his mother-in-law should ask
him to do so. For he knew that its whiteness and gilt, and tiny knots
of ribbon, gave to the wearer that military