“I’ll tell you what. Try a trick at the well. I know how they do it. My aunt did it once, and mother, too. I heard them talking about it, and mother declared she saw father’s face and nearly fell into the well. Hold a mirror over the well at exactly noon when the sun shines down into it, and wish that you may see the face of the one you are to marry. If my face looks in the glass by yours, I’m the chap. If Sandy’s, then Sandy it is, and I’ve no more to say. Try it to-morrow noon. Will you?” Nannie had little faith in the experiment, of which she had heard before, but to please Jack she promised, and the next day as it drew near the hour of noon when the oracle was supposed to be propitious, she stood leaning over the curb, holding in her hands a small mirror, into which her white face was looking anxiously for the one which was to appear beside it just as the sun touched the meridian and shone down upon the water. She had said she had no faith in the charm, but in her room before she started on her errand she had knelt in an agony of tears and prayed that it might be Jack instead of Sandy. Somewhat comforted with a belief that God would hear her, and it would be Jack, she stole down to the woods and stood watching and waiting till the noonday sun shining through a clearing in the pines struck the waters below. Jack had fully intended to be on the spot hiding behind a tree which grew near, and when Nannie was absorbed in her task he meant to steal cautiously behind her on the carpet of soft pine-needles, which would give no sound, and by looking over the curb let his face appear beside hers in the mirror; then, before she recovered from her surprise, he could retreat backward, and when discovered declare he had just come upon the scene. But an unforeseen accident kept him away, and only a blackbird and bobolink among the pines saw the trembling girl, whose nerves were strained to their utmost, and whose disordered imagination grew more and more disordered as floating clouds flitted across the sun, shutting out some of its brightness. Then she fancied that shadowy lineaments were forming upon the mirror, that a pair of eyes were looking at her, and they were not the brown laughing eyes of Jack, but the blue ones of Sandy, whose rugged features spread themselves beside her own, while she stood riveted to the spot, her pale lips whispering, “It is Sandy, God help me!” After that there was no wavering, and Jack’s arguments and ridicule had no power to move her. She knew what she had seen. It was Sandy. She could not defy fate, and the wedding was appointed for Thursday night, when the McPherson house was to be thrown open and the marriage-feast held there after the ceremony.