“I tell you, sir,” he at length resumed, “the sight of the gentleman’s money won me at first, but when I came to think it all over, I seemed to think that somehow it did not have a right look—their not wanting any lights and coming so late in the evening, to say nothing about their bribing me to let them into the chapel. I thought if it was honest and square, even if the marriage was to be a secret, they might have come quietly but openly, and at a proper time, for the ceremony; and, sir—I beg your pardon if I did wrong, but my conscience was heavy—the gold seemed like the price of innocent blood to me, and I went and confessed the whole thing to the old rector himself, and gave him the money to put in the poor-box.” Marion’s son started violently at these last words, and he grew white and trembling. “_When_ did you make this confession—_before_ or _after_ marriage?” he asked, with intense eagerness. “The afternoon before, sir. I felt that if there was anything wrong about the affair, the good old rector would see that it was made right. He reprimanded me severely for the betrayal of my trust, as he called it, but he relieved my mind by saying that no wrong should be done. Sir, you are faint,” he said, noticing his visitor’s ghastly face, which was absolutely startling in its pallor. “No; go on! go on!” he breathed, in a voice that sounded strange even to himself. “Well, sir, you had better sit down upon the bench, for you don’t look able to stand;” and he indicated a rustic bench near by, and the young man sank weakly upon it, motioning his companion to proceed. “I don’t know, sir, how the old rector managed that business, but I _do_ know that after that young couple had entered the chapel I crept softly up and looked in through an open window, and—_I heard his reverence marry them good and strong as ever a couple was married in the world_.” “Are you _sure_?” demanded his listener, actually gasping for breath at this startling and unexpected announcement, while he wiped away the great drops of sweat that had gathered upon his brow. “As sure, sir, as that I am talking to you at this moment,” returned the old man, confidently. “I could not _see_ the rector, it is true, for the chapel was dark, but I knew the good old man’s voice well, and I _know_ that, instead of the young man’s clergyman—if a clergyman he had with him at all—marrying them, the rector of St. John’s chapel said the ceremony over them himself.” “Oh, if you could prove this to me!” Marion’s son said, an agony of longing in his concentrated tones. The sexton shook his head with an air of perplexity. “I cannot prove it, sir, except by my word, and I’ve never told any one before; but you, sir, being the son of the pretty young lady—I had seen her before, strolling with the gentleman—you being her child, have a right to know it.” “The rector! the rector! where is he? If this is true, he can prove it,” his companion cried, starting up with excitement.