Kitty did not undress at all, considering the unearthly hour at which she was to set out. She flung off her evening dress into a corner, reflecting that though it must be prepared after, instead of before, her marriage, she must have a trousseau all the same, and that no bride puts on again her old things after that event. Kitty put on her new winter dress, which was very becoming, and had a pretty hat to match it, and lay down to snatch an hour or two’s rest before the hour of starting. She woke reluctantly to the sound of a handful of pebbles thrown against her window, and then, though still exceedingly sleepy and greatly tempted to pay no attention to the summons, managed at last to rouse herself, and sprang up with a thump of her heart when she recollected what it was--her wedding morning! She lighted a candle and put on her hat, studying the effect in the glass, though she knew that Walter was blowing his fingers with cold below; and then, with a fur cloak over her arm, she stole downstairs. How dark it was, and how cold! The country black with night, nothing visible but the waving, close to the house, of some spectral trees. But Walter pulled her hand through his arm the moment she slipped out, and her spirits rose. Two can face the darkness where one would shrink before it. They had the strangest, merriest walk--stumbling in the maddest way, jolting over stiles, going astray into ploughed fields, rousing all the dogs in all the farms and cottages for miles round--but at last found their way, worn out with stumbling and laughing, to the station, where the train had not yet arrived. And then came the rush and sweep through the night, the arrival in the gray morning at the station, the rousing up of the grim priest known as ‘the blacksmith’--though I am not sure that this was his trade. Kitty found time to smarten herself up a little, to straighten the brim of her hat and put it on as if she had taken it fresh out of its bandbox, and to put on her white gloves--the only things truly bride-like, which she had put in her pocket before she left home--and then the ceremony, whatever it was, was performed, and the boy and girl were made man and wife. After it was all over, Kitty and Walter looked at each other in the gray morning light with a pale and frightened look. When the thing was done the excitement suddenly failed, and for a moment everything was black. Kitty cried a little, and Walter, if it had not been for his pride of manhood, was very near following her example. What awful thing was it they had done? Kitty was the first to recover her courage. ‘I am dreadfully hungry,’ she said, ‘and so tired. Walter, do go and see if we can have some breakfast anywhere. I must have some breakfast, or I shall die.’ Kitty was very fond of this alternative, but had shown no intention of adopting it as yet. ‘I’ll go on to that public-house over there; but won’t you come too, Kitty?’