To-night, as the little clock on Justine's bureau struck eight, she left her room and met Jud in the narrow hall upstairs. Downstairs could be heard the muffled voices of an expectant crowd, an occasional giggle breaking through the buzz. He kissed her and both were silent, thinking of other homes. One remembered the big white house on the hill, the other the old yellow farmhouse, large and rambling, "over on the pike." To-night they faced the minister in the parlor of one of the lowliest dwellings in the neighborhood. The boy had not an acre of all his father's lands; the girl was poor, at the gates of the famous Van homestead. They were married not in his house, but in hers. The cottage stood in the corner of a thirty-acre farm that had come to her through her grandmother. This was all except memories that the child had to connect her present life with the comfortable days of the past. Old Mrs. Crane, who lived with Justine in the little cot, met them at the foot of the creaking stairway and threw open the door to the parlor. Before the boy and girl gleamed the faces of a score or more of eager, excited friends. There was hardly a girl in the crowd who was not dressed more expensively than the bride. Justine was proudly aware of the critical, simpering gaze that swept over her simple gown; she could almost read the exultant thoughts of her guests, as they compared her plain lawn to the ridiculous finery that hid their sunburnt necks, scrawny arms, and perspiring bodies. Her face was fresh and flushed with happiness, pride--perhaps disdain; their faces had, at least, been washed and lavishly powdered. Most of them wore absurd white gloves over their red arms. Yet they were the élite of the county. There were red dresses, blue dresses, yellow dresses, and there were other dresses in which the colors of the rainbow shone, all made to fit women other than those who wore them. The men, old and young, bearded and beardless, were the most uncouth aristocrats that ever lorded it over a countryside. True, they had put on their store clothes and had blackened their boots and shoes; they had shaved, and they had plastered their hair faultlessly; they had cast aside their quids of tobacco and they were as circumspect as if they were at church. Justine and Jud stood with clasped hands before the young minister, listening to his lengthy and timely discourse on the blessedness of matrimony. Then came the vows. Their eyes met. The answers! They breathed them--the yes and the yes and the yes--almost unconsciously. Then the last words--"Whom God hath joined together let not man put asunder!"