The bridal day was fixed for the 20th of June, and Edna felt that she should be glad when it was over. She had no thought, or even wish, that anything would occur to prevent the affair, which was talked of now from morning till night in Summerville, and was even agitating the higher circle in New York; for many of Georgie’s friends were coming out to see her married, and rooms were engaged for them at the hotel and every other available house. And now but three days remained before the 20th. A few of the city guests, Georgie’s more intimate friends, who were to be bridesmaids, had already come, and were stopping at Oakwood; and on the afternoon of the 17th, they went with Roy and Georgie to a pleasant point on the river, where they had a little pic-nic, and dined upon the grass, and made merry generally, until a roll of thunder overhead, and the sudden darkening of the sky warned them to hurry home if they would escape the storm, which came up so fast, and so furiously, that the horses of the carriage in which Georgie rode, frightened by the constant lightning and rapid thunder crashes, became unmanageable, and dashed along the highway at a rate which threatened destruction to the occupants of the carriage. “We are lost! we shall all be killed!” Georgie shrieked, just as from a thicket of trees a man darted out, and, seizing the foaming steeds by the bridle, managed, by being himself dragged along with them, to check their headlong speed, and finally quiet them. “Thank you, sir. We owe our lives to you. Please give me your name and address,” Roy said, but the man merely mumbled something inarticulate in reply, and slouching his hat over his face so as to shield it from the rain, walked rapidly away, just as the other carriage driven by Russell came up. Roy’s ladies were very much frightened and excited, especially Georgie, whose face was white as ashes, when Roy turned to speak to her, and who shook as if she had an ague chill. “I am so very nervous,” she said, by way of explanation, when, after she was safe at Oakwood, Maude commented upon her extreme pallor, and her general terrified appearance.