And so bridegroom and bride—with a mutual trust even beyond mutual expectation—walked to the altar, there to be welded into one. They were married at St. George’s Church,—married in the bosom of a few surrounding friends. The bride’s children were present, and cast a mixed interest of pensiveness and pleasure on the ceremony. The bride had told her bridesmaids that, “It would cost her a struggle, but the dear children should be present; it was right they should. They ought to have the sacrifice impressed upon their minds in the most solemn way; the sacrifice that their poor mother consented to make for them. Nobody but herself knew what a struggle it was; but, it was her duty, and though her heart was with dear Pennibacker,—yes, she would go through with it. Mr. Jericho had given the dear girls the most beautiful lace frocks; and to Basil a lovely gold hunting-watch; therefore, they ought and they should, witness the sacrifice.” And Miss Pennibacker and Miss Agatha Pennibacker, like little fairies, clothed in muslin and lace from elfin-looms, saw the sacrifice with a vivacity of heart that almost spirted out at the corners of their lips; and Basil Pennibacker, a gaunt, reedy boy of twelve, did nothing during the ceremony but take out his new gold hunting-watch—open it—snap it to—and return it again, as though he had already had a glimpse of the preparations for the wedding-breakfast, and with his thoughts upon all the delicacies of the season, was impatient for the sacrifice to be completed. And the last “Amen”—the last blow on the rivet—was struck, and Solomon Jericho and Sabilla Pennibacker were man and wife. Whereupon, in a hysteric moment, the bride turning to her children, took the three in one living bunch in her arms, and sweeping them over to Jericho, said—“You are their father now.” Turning to the church books of St. George’s we find that the date of this interesting deed of gift makes it about eight years to the date of the particular emphatic question with which Mrs. Jericho, as with a flourish of a silver trumpet, opened this little history. CHAPTER II.