Again the captain of the moonshiners, Sam Wiles, was taken to the county jail. This time he did not escape. In process of time he and the other prisoners were tried for the illicit distilling of whisky, were found guilty, and sentenced to the penitentiary at Frankfort for a term of years. The charge of murder was not pressed against them. So they pass from this history. CHAPTER XXIV. "I Thee Wed." The golden month of September saw Viola much improved in health. Her wound had healed nicely, thanks to her strong constitution and to the care she had received from the physician and nurse. Now she was rapidly convalescing, and as the fine autumn days went by she was able to ride in her carriage, and even visit the mission school, though unable to teach her class of girls. By Christmas time the roses had indeed reappeared in her cheeks, and her step was almost as elastic as ever. June found her fully restored to health. This month was to be forever memorable to her, for her wedding to Jasper Very was set for the eighteenth day. The whole plantation was in a fever of excitement quite a while before the event was to transpire. All was bustle and commotion. Every one seemed to have a personal interest in the affair. The slaves talked and sang about it as they worked in the fields, and renewed the gossip in the evening around their cabin doors. Aunt Nancy, the cook, attired in a dress spotlessly clean, a bright red bandanna tied around her head, was more pompous and dictatorial than ever. Her helpers had been increased for the event, and she issued her commands with a force which would have done credit to a skipper on a quarter-deck. Often she scolded those around her, but her anger was more apparent than real, and while she smote right and left with one hand, with the other soon after she patted and petted the object of her wrath. To her children: "You, Dick and Jim, git away frum under my feet. If yo' little niggers don't cl'ar out frum dis room, ah'll beat yer wooly heads togedder. How kin Ah see dat dis cake gits jest de right brown, if yo' keep askin' me fer cookies an' things! Take dat--boxing their ears--an' march out doors." The boys ducked a second blow, and rushing into the yard, each turned a somersault, and grinned the content he felt. Then they began to sing: "O Miss Lu! sugar in 'er shoe, Show me de hole whar de hog jump fru." For days the preparations for the marriage feast went on. Such baking, boiling, and every form of cooking, was never seen in "Mount Pisgah" before.