Kenneth nodded approvingly, and Harry went on: “I suggested that we be married, and when she asked how we could without priest or witness, I did some tall lying. I told her that the marriage ceremony was far more simple to be binding than she thought; that if we pledged ourselves to each other in the words of the Prayer Book it was lawful. I was a lawyer and I knew and cited some cases I had known, and talked law and civil law, and said that as a lawyer I could marry myself and all that, until her brain was in a whirl and she believed all I said,—lies, of course. Oh, pray don’t hold that ugly thing that way. It might go off, and this pretty room be spattered with my brains and you tried for murder. I meant no harm to the girl. I only wanted to have her believe she was mine, for, with her yielding nature, I feared her aunt’s influence. There was a big bowlder by a brook which had its source in the mountains back of us, and there we sat down and pledged our faith to each other. I, Harold take thee, Connie, and so on. You know how it goes. ‘You are mine now,’ I said, ‘just as truly as if a bishop had heard our vows, but when I come to claim you we will, of course, have the ceremony in public, to satisfy your aunt.’ There was a troubled look on her face, whose expression I shall never forget, as she said to me, ‘It does not seem a marriage with no prayer in it. Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer together.’” “Oh,” Kenneth groaned, tightening his hold on the pistol and recalling the little girl who had once said that prayer at his side. “There you are again, wanting to shoot me,” Hal exclaimed, “and I deserve it, and wouldn’t mind much, if it were not for Kitty and the baby. I couldn’t say ‘Our Father’ with her to save my life, but she said it with her head bowed and the fading light falling upon the sheen of her fair hair. Now you _are_ going to kill me!” and Hal sprang from his chair as Kenneth raised his right hand. “For Heaven’s sake throw that thing out of the window, if you want me to keep my senses.” “Sit down, and don’t be a coward as well as a knave. I shall not kill you till your story is ended. Go on. You made her think she was your wife?”