The horseman swept past the gate, a swift black shadow amid the thunder of hoof-beats, and the lovers drew closer together. Just as he roared past them his whistling ceased and a strong, bold voice shouted: "Hello, Justine!" He was saluting, in drunken gallantry, the girl whom he believed to be asleep beneath a counterpane near some black window in the little house. The horse shied, his whip swished through the air and cut across the animal's flank; the ugly snort of the beast mingled with oaths from the rider. The girl shuddered and placed her hands over her ears; her companion set his teeth and muttered: "The dog! I wish that horse would throw him and break his neck! He's not fit to live. Justine, if there is a man who will go to hell when he dies, that man is 'Gene Crawley. And he wants you--the hound! The sweetest, gentlest, purest girl in the world! He wants you!" They forgot the rider, and the clatter of the horse's hoofs died away in the night. The lovers turned slowly toward the house. At the door he stooped and kissed her. "The last night we are to part like this," he whispered. She laid both hands upon his face. "Let us pray to-night, dear, that we may be always as happy as we now are," she said softly. She opened the door, and the two stood for a moment in the fair light from the cottage lamp. From above him on the door-sill, she laid her fingers in his curly brown hair, and said, half timidly, half joyfully: "The last night we shall say good-bye like this." Then she kissed him suddenly and was gone, blushing and trembling. He looked at the closed door for an instant, and then dropped to his knees and kissed the step on which she had stood. CHAPTER II. "LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER." The next night they were married. In the little cottage there were lights and the revelry known only in country nuptials. The doors and windows were open, and scores of young people in their best clothes flitted in and out, their merry voices ringing with excitement, their faces glowing with pleasure, their eyes sparkling with the mischief peculiar to occasions of the kind. There were the congratulations and the teasings; the timid jests and the coarse ones; the cynical bits of advice from lofty experts; the blushes of prospective brides; the red-faced denials of guilty beaux; the smiles, the winks, and the songs; the feasting and the farewells. "That boy," Jud Sherrod, and "Cap" Van's daughter, Justine, were to be married. The community would have liked to be glad. Everybody had "allowed" they would be married some day. Now that the day had come, amid the rejoicing there were doubts, such as this: