The blood, which at first forsook her cheeks through fear, was almost instantly forced back into her visage again by the pendant position of her head. She beat the empty tin pan which she still retained in her hand, but the voracious and hunger-pinched vulture had no notion of relinquishing his hold on account of noise. On the contrary, he seemed to enjoy it, and with many a sturdy twitch and flap, and many an airy wheel, he still held his way toward a rugged promontory situated at the head of the valley. Fortunately, when he was twenty feet from the ground and about eighty rods from the cottage, the calico dress and undergarments in which mainly his talons were fastened, gave out, and the liberated woman dropped on hands and knees in the muddy bed of the creek, over which the bird was passing at the time. While hovering over her, about to pounce down upon her and try the elevating business again, a sheep-herder who had seen the bird approaching the cottage, gave him a dose of buckshot, which broke one wing and left him at the mercy of his captor. [Illustration] FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE. _Jonathan_.—“I hain’t got no tongue for soapin’ of ye, Susan Jane. I mean _business_, I do. Will ye hev me?” _Susan Jane_.—“I don’t know much about ye, Jonathan Junkit, but I’m willin’ to risk it, anyhow. Yer’s my hand. I’m yourn.” _Old Volume._ This afternoon I attended a private wedding on Howard Street. I may safely term it “marriage in high life,” as the combined height of the couple was something over twelve feet. The groom was a bachelor, who for many a year had stood around the fire like the half of a tongs, very good as a poker, but not worth standing room as a picker up. He looked as though it wouldn’t require much advice to make him—even at the eleventh hour—prove recreant to his vows, and back out from under the yoke the reverend gentleman was about to place upon his neck. His companion, however, was no novice in the business in which she was engaged. She was fearlessly putting forth upon that sea on which she had twice been wrecked, but she was nothing loth to try it again. Were she only skilled in navigation as well as in embarkation, she would have been the one to send on expeditions to either the North or South Pole, as the case might be. [Illustration: THE TRYING MOMENT.] It was truly encouraging to the timorous and uninitiated, to see with what a broad smile she regarded her husband that was to be; and with what a readiness she responded to the momentous question propounded by the minister. And when they stood as husband and wife, her Milesian face lighted up with irrepressible joy, until it beamed like a Chinese lantern. Her emotions went far to convince me that there is in those matrimonial fields a balm for every ill; a perfect bliss worthy the seeking, even at the risk of receiving the bruised spirit, if not the bruised head.