e
door. Lizzi gave a little start when she heard the click of the latch,
and a shiver ran over her. She was not frightened, only realizing that
the door of her maiden life was closed behind her.

Squire Harker lighted two candles, and Lizzi's eyes blinked in the
yellow light but soon they were able to pierce the semi-darkness, and to
her surprise she could discover no preacher. She had thought him part of
the romance. To no plan of Gill's had she objected after consenting to a
secret marriage, but she had never dreamed otherwise than that the
ceremony would be performed by a clergyman. When she saw Squire Harker,
she supposed, because he was sexton, Gill had taken him into confidence
and he was present because of his duties at the church, putting out the
lights and locking it up.

Gill seemed as much astounded as she that there was no preacher present,
and asked rather sharply why he had gone. Squire Harker replied that the
preacher had been detained at the other end of the circuit by quarterly
meeting.

"It's too confounded bad!" said Gill, angrily.

"It's bad luck to put off a weddin'," said Lizzi, disappointed.

"I think so, too," Gill remarked, and then asked, as if the idea had
just struck him:

"Why not be married by the Squire?"

Lizzi, dressed in her best, demurred. She thought a church-wedding
should be conducted by a preacher.

"A marriage ceremony performed by a Justice of the Peace is as binding
and respectable as any churchman's," Gill urged.

"It's common-like, though," Lizzi replied; "but I'd be married by a
squire rather than put it off."

"You will have to do it then," Gill said, in a tone that did not conceal
his chagrin at having to be wedded by a Justice of the Peace.

While Squire Harker was gone for his books, pen, ink, and paper, which
were concealed in a thorn-bush near the church, Lizzi sat silent in a
pew and wondered if the angels would make merry over a church-wedding
conducted by a squire.

When Squire Harker thought he had allowed himself time enough to get to
his office and back, he tapped at the church door. Gill shaded the
candles and called to him to enter. He closed the door and made a
hat-peg of the key, the black slouch effectually preventing any peeping
through the keyhole.

He took a position behind the table on which he had placed the candles,
and Gill and Lizzi stood before it. The candles threw their weird
shadows on the walls and ceiling of the low lecture-room