A “spite match,” the community in general called the Deacon's marriage; and many a man, and many a woman, too, regarding the amazing publishing notice in the frame up at the meeting-house, felt that in Jane Tillman Deacon Baxter had met his Waterloo. “She's plenty good enough for him,” said Aunt Abby Cole, “though I know that's a terrible poor compliment. If she thinks she'll ever break into s'ciety here at the Falls, she'll find herself mistaken! It's a mystery to me why the poor deluded man ever done it; but ain't it wonderful the ingenuity the Lord shows in punishin' sinners? I couldn't 'a' thought out such a good comeuppance myself for Deacon Baxter, as marryin' Jane Tillman! The thing that troubles me most, is thinkin' how tickled the Baptists'll be to git her out o' their meetin' an' into ourn!” XXXV. TWO HEAVENS AT the very moment that Deacon Baxter was I starting out on his quest for a housekeeper, Patty and Mark drove into the Mason dooryard and the sisters flew into each other's arms. The dress that Mark had bought for Patty was the usual charting and unsuitable offering of a man's spontaneous affection, being of dark violet cloth with a wadded cape lined with satin. A little brimmed hat of violet velvet tied under her chin with silk ribbons completed the costume, and before the youthful bride and groom had left the ancestral door Mrs. Wilson had hung her own ermine victorine (the envy of all Edgewood) around Patty's neck and put her ermine willow muff into her new daughter's hands; thus she was as dazzling a personage, and as improperly dressed for the journey, as she could well be. Waitstill, in her plain linsey-woolsey, was entranced with Patty's beauty and elegance, and the two girls had a few minutes of sisterly talk, of interchange of radiant hopes and confidences before Mark tore them apart, their cheeks wet with happy tears. As the Mason house faded from view, Patty having waved her muff until the last moment, turned in her seat and said:-- “Mark, dear, do you think your father would care if I spent the twenty-dollar gold-piece he gave me, for Waitstill? She will be married in a fortnight, and if my father does not give her the few things she owns she will go to her husband more ill-provided even than I was. I have so much, dear Mark, and she so little.” “It's your own wedding-present to use as you wish,” Mark answered, “and it's exactly like you to give it away. Go ahead and spend it if you want to; I can always earn enough to keep you, without anybody's help!” and Mark, after cracking the whip vaingloriously, kissed his wife just over the violet ribbons, and with sleigh-bells jingling they sped over the snow towards what seemed Paradise to them, the New Hampshire village where they had been married and where--