The listening maid heard the door unlock and open and beheld liberty bartered for captivity with love for boot, and Mr. Pettigrew speed like a phantom across the moonlight and vanish in the woods. Before she could leave the window a sound of galloping hoofs told at last the coming of John March. Cornelius had barely time to scamper out into the night when the master of Widewood came trotting around the corner of the house and thence off to the stable, never to know of the farce which made Mr. Pettigrew thereafter the tool of Leggett, and which might even more easily have been a tragedy with the mountain people for actors and himself its victim. LIV. AN UNEXPECTED PLEASURE Ravenel and Fannie were married in church on an afternoon. The bridesmaids were Barbara and a very pretty cousin of Fannie's from Pulaski City, who would have been prettier yet had she not been revel-worn. The crowded company was dotted with notables; Garnet and Gamble took excellent care of the governor. But the bride's father was the finest figure of all. "Old Halliday looks grand!" said Gamble. "I'm glad he does," kindly responded Garnet; "it would be a pity for him to be disappointed in himself on such an occasion." Parson Tombs kissed the bride, who, in a certain wildness of grateful surprise, gave him his kiss back again with a hug. When Ravenel's sister, from Flatrock, said: "Well, Colonel Ravenel, aren't you going to kiss me?" he gracefully did so, as if pleased to be reminded of something he might have forgotten. And then he kissed the aged widow with whom he had lived so long. Her cottage, said rumor, was not to be sold, after all, to make room for the new brick stores. No, the Salters' house had been bought for that purpose--it was ready to tumble down, anyhow--and on Miss Mary's marriage, soon to be, Miss Martha and her mother would take the Halliday cottage, the General keeping a room or two, but getting his meals at the hotel. "It's a way of living I've always liked!" he said, tossing his gray curls. The bridal pair, everybody understood, were to leave Suez on the Launcelot Halliday, and turn northward by rail in the morning on an unfamiliar route. John March chose not to see the wedding. He remained in Pulaski City, where for three days he had been very busy in the lobbies of the Capitol, and was hoping to take the train for the north that evening. Between the trifling of one and the dickering of another, he was delayed to the last moment; but then he flung himself into a shabby hack, paid double fare for a pretence of double speed, and at the ticket window had to be called back to get his pocketbook. The lighted train was moving out into the night as a porter jerked him and his valise on to the rear platform.