Then the door opened and Dorothy came out, with a sweet pride in her eyes and her head high. At her side walked the man whose face they had been curiously waiting to see. They acknowledged at a glance that it was an uncommon face from which one gained feeling of a certain power and mastery--yet of candour, too, and fearless good nature. But the crowd, hungry for interest and gossip, breathed deep in a sort of chorused gasp at the dramatic circumstance of the bridegroom leaning heavily on the arm of Bas Rowlett, the defeated lover. Already Uncle Jase stood with his back to the broad, straight column whose canopy of leafage spread a green roof between the tall, waving grass that served as a carpet and the blue of a smiling sky. Through branches, themselves as heavy and stalwart as young trees, and through the myriads of arrow-pointed leaves that rustled as they sifted and shifted the gold flakes of sunlight, sounded the low, mysterious harping of wind-fingers as light and yet as profound as those of some dreaming organist. The girl, with her eyes fixed on that living emblem of strength and tranquillity, felt as though instead of leaving a house, she were entering a cathedral--though of man-built cathedrals she knew nothing. It was the spirit which hallows cathedrals that brought to her deep young eyes a serenity and thanksgiving that made her face seem ethereal in its happiness--the spirit of benediction, of the presence of God and of human sanctuary. So she went as if she were treading clouds to the waiting figure of the man who was to perform the ceremony. When the clear voice of the justice of the peace sounded out as the pair--or rather the trio--stood before him at the foot of the great walnut, the astonishment which had been simmering in the crowd broke into audible being again and with a rising tempo. The tone with which old Jase read the service was full and sonorous and the responses were clear as bell metal. On the fringe of the gathering an old woman's whispered words carried to those about her: "Did ye heer thet? Jase called him Parish Thornton--I thought he give ther name of Cal Maggard!" Even Bas Rowlett, whose nerves were keyed for an ordeal, started and almost let the leaning bridegroom fall. The loft of old Caleb's barn had been cleared for that day, and through the afternoon the fiddles whined there, alternating with the twang of banjo and "dulcimore." Old Spike Crooch, who dwelt far up at the headwaters of Little Tribulation, where the "trails jest wiggle an' wingle about," and who bore the repute of a master violinist, had vowed that he "meant ter fiddle at one more shin-dig afore he laid him down an' died"--and he had journeyed the long way to carry out his pledge.