'Will you wait for me, Hannah, darling,' said Jason, 'all the time it may take me to get ready for a wife, and never love any other man, nor let any other man love you? Never forget me, for years and years, perhaps, till I come back for you? Will you always remember that we love each other, and that you are to be my wife?' 'I will wait for you, dear, if I wait till I die,' she answered. He folded her yet more closely to his breast. While they held each other thus, forgetting all else in the world, his father burst, furious and terrible, into the arbor! He seized them with a strong and cruel rasp, and tore them pitilessly asunder. 'Go into the house, boy,' he cried, 'and leave this'-- 'Stop!' shouted Jason, springing to his feet, his face as white as death and his eyes flashing--'Stop! Do not call her any name but a good name! I would not bear it if you were twenty times my father!' The old man stood transfixed. 'She is as good as you or as my mother, and will go to heaven as well as you when she dies,' he continued passionately; 'as well as any of us; as well as the minister! What did you come here for? Haven't you driven my life almost to death ever since I can remember; and isn't that enough, but you must come here and kill my darling, my dear, my love?' He knelt where she lay on the ground. 'Hear the boy,' cried the father, in a rage equally terrible and far less noble. 'Hear the boy go on about the baggage!' The boy still knelt, unheeding anything save the senseless form beside him. 'Wasn't it enough that you should wanton with a young woman in this style, but you must do it on the holy Sabbath day?' the old man continued. 'Mother,' he cried, jerking the words over his shoulder at his wife, who stood behind him, 'do you bring such profligates as this into the world, to disgrace a pious man's fame and bring his house to sorrow? Let him go forth--my oldest and youngest born, and eat husks with the swine; he shall have no portion, and there shall be no fatted calf killed when he returns!' Still the youth knelt, and now his head had fallen upon the prostrate body, and he was covering her cold hand with kisses. 'Look here, young man,' the father cried, 'leave go that girl's hand and come into the house; as true as there's a God in Israel I'll teach you what a stout rawhide is made of!' Just at this juncture neighbor Hopkins and his wife, warned by quick-flying little Martha that something terrible was going on at Deacon Fletcher's, appeared, hurrying towards the spot.