She had assumed a large white bonnet, though I do not think that she and Lovell took so much as a stroll to the beach after the ceremony--and her plump and shapely hands were encased in a pair of green kid gloves. She gazed thoughtfully, at each occupant of the room in turn, not omitting Lovell, who never once stirred or lifted his eyes. Mr. William Barlow was silently passing the water, when Brother Mark arrived with the minister. That grave dignitary advanced with measured tread to a small stand, draped with a long white sheet, that had been prepared for him in the centre of the room. He took off his gloves, and folded them; he took off his overcoat, and laid it on the back of a chair; and if he had then reached down into his pockets and taken out a rope, and proceeded to adjust a hanging-noose, his audience could not have shown a more ghastly and breathless interest in his performance. "Will the parties"--his sonorous voice resounded through the awful stillness--"Will the parties--about--to be joined--in holy wedlock--now--come forward?" As Lovell then arose and walked, with an automatic hitch in his legs, across the room to his bride, there was about him all the stiffness and pallor of the grave without its smile of peace. "Lovell and Nancy"--arose the deep intonation--will you--now--join hands? It was a warm strong hand in the green kid glove. Its grasp might have sent a thrill of life through Lovell's rigid frame, for when the minister inquired: "And do you, Lovell, take this woman?" etc., etc. Lovell bent his body, moved his lips, and replied in a strange, far-away tone, "Yes'm, _I_ think so. _I_ do, certainly." But when the question was put to the bride, she, Nancy, promised to take Lovell to be her wedded husband, to love and cherish, yes, and to cleave to, with a round, full "I do," that left no possible room for doubt in the mind of any one present, and seemed to send back the flood of frozen terror to Lovell's veins. Lovell and Nancy were pronounced man and wife, and Nancy then divested herself of her bonnet and gloves, and joined in the festivities which followed with a hearty good-will, that proved her to be quite at home among the Wallencampers, and won at once their affection and esteem. The manner, particularly, in which she carried beans from her plate to her mouth, gracefully balanced on the extreme verge of her knife, as an adroit and finished work of art, provoked the wonder and admiration of all those whose beans sometimes wandered and fell off by the way. And all the while, Mrs. Barlow's adjectives flowed in a full and copious stream. "Oh, Lovell had been so wild," she said to me. "Oh, dreadful! But didn't I think he looked like a husband now? So quick, too! Oh, yes, wasn't it beautiful! Abbie Ann said he looked as though he'd been a husband fifteen years!" After the ceremony, Lovell had taken his pipe and retired a little from the active scenes which were being enacted around him.