ered, stopped and huddled closer together,
while a slight scream was heard from some of the ladies and a confused
whispering among the gentlemen. Thus tossing to and fro, they might
have been fancifully compared to a splendid bunch of flowers suddenly
shaken by a puff of wind which threatened to scatter the leaves of an
old brown, withered rose on the same stalk with two dewy buds, such
being the emblem of the widow between her fair young bridemaids. But
her heroism was admirable. She had started with an irrepressible
shudder, as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on her
heart; then, recovering herself, while her attendants were yet in
dismay, she took the lead and paced calmly up the aisle. The bell
continued to swing, strike and vibrate with the same doleful
regularity as when a corpse is on its way to the tomb.

"My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken," said the
widow, with a smile, to the clergyman at the altar. "But so many
weddings have been ushered in with the merriest peal of the bells, and
yet turned out unhappily, that I shall hope for better fortune under
such different auspices."

"Madam," answered the rector, in great perplexity, "this strange
occurrence brings to my mind a marriage-sermon of the famous Bishop
Taylor wherein he mingles so many thoughts of mortality and future woe
that, to speak somewhat after his own rich style, he seems to hang the
bridal-chamber in black and cut the wedding-garment out of a
coffin-pall. And it has been the custom of divers nations to infuse
something of sadness into their marriage ceremonies, so to keep death
in mind while contracting that engagement which is life's chiefest
business. Thus we may draw a sad but profitable moral from this
funeral-knell."

But, though the clergyman might have given his moral even a keener
point, he did not fail to despatch an attendant to inquire into the
mystery and stop those sounds so dismally appropriate to such a
marriage. A brief space elapsed, during which the silence was broken
only by whispers and a few suppressed titterings among the
wedding-party and the spectators, who after the first shock were
disposed to draw an ill-natured merriment from the affair. The young
have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth.
The widow's glance was observed to wander for an instant toward a
window of the church, as if searching for the time-worn marble that
she had dedicated to her first husba