The wedding was held in the Baptist church, and there were three ministers to make it what it should be. There was the Baptist minister, who belonged there, and the Methodist minister—Mr. Summers—who helped because Annie Laurie loved him, and there was old Mr. Mills, who came back from Florida to put on the finishing touches, because Annie Laurie had known him ever since she was a baby. She looked glorious, did Annie Laurie, so tall and strong and fine, with her dark red hair burnished like a bird’s breast, all in her white, with her floating veil. Instead of bride’s roses she carried a bouquet of great tawny chrysanthemums the color of her hair. Sam has grown to be a magnificent fellow and everyone likes him. When I remember what a pale-faced, anxious boy he was once, and see what a strong, capable, independent fellow he has become, I feel tremendously proud, not only of him, but of Lee, which helped him to make himself what he is. There was a time when everybody thought him the son of a thief, and when he was broken-hearted with grief and shame, when he might have gone down and become worse than nothing. But he wanted to be good and fine, and everybody in Lee turned in and gave him a boost. Annie Laurie helped most of all, of course. Now she has her reward. They have gone away on a wedding trip, and I am so glad. Never before has either of them gone outside of the state they were born in. But now she and Sam are off to the North, and will visit New York and Boston, Washington and Baltimore, and a number of other places. Fortunately, they have a good superintendent, and the dairy will get on very well without them. I am going to stay in the house with Annie Laurie’s two aunts until she returns. Aunt Adnah is very restless, and Aunt Zillah cannot manage her very well, but when I am there I can, I think, keep them amused. I move over to-morrow, and shall stay in Annie Laurie’s own room, which is as clean, if not as bare, as in the old days when I knew it first. How Annie Laurie did want dear old Haystack Thompson to play at the little dance after the wedding! But he is not to be found. Never since he ran away from good little Mrs. Kitchell has he been seen or heard of. But I can’t believe that any harm has come to him. He is off in some other part of his beloved mountains, fiddling for new friends. I miss him terribly. Don’t think me egotistical, but I do wonder if he would return if he knew that I was back here. He always loved me quite out of proportion to my deserts. It was because he helped to find me that time I was kidnapped, I think, and because I was such a queer, unlucky little girl and needed him so much. But whatever the reason, we are great friends, and I can not think of anything that would give me greater pleasure than to see him loping down the mountain-side, with his fiddle under his arm, and his hair all in a shock, like a windblown haystack.