thing, but a pleased smile flickered for a minute on his
lips, while Macnab resumed his hammering with redoubled zest to a
chuckling accompaniment.

"It would be nothing," he resumed, turning round again and lowering his
hammer, "if you hadn't always protested that you would _never_ marry,
but--oh, Jessie, I wonder at a girl who has always been so firm in
sticking to her resolves, turning out so fickle. I really never thought
that the family of Macnab could be brought so low through one of its
female members."

"I know one of its male members," said Lumley, in a warning voice, "who
will be brought still lower if he keeps dancing about so on that
rickety--there--I told you so!"

As he spoke, Peter Macnab missed his footing and came down on the table
with a crash so tremendous that the crazy article of furniture became
something like what Easterns style a split-camel--its feeble legs spread
outwards, and its body came flat to the ground.

Sprawling for a moment Macnab rose dishevelled from a mass of
pine-branches and looked surprised.

"Not hurt, I hope," said Lumley, laughing, while Jessie looked anxious
for a moment.

"I--I think not. No--evidently not. Yes, Jessie, my dear, you may
regard this as a sort of practical illustration of the value of
submission. If that table had resisted me I had been hurt, probably.
Giving way as it did--I'm all right."

"Your illustration is not a happy one," said Lumley, "for your own
safety was purchased at the cost of the table. If you had taken the
lesson home, and said that `pride goes before a fall,' it would have
been more to the purpose."

"Perhaps so," returned Macnab, assisting to clear away the split table:
"my pride is at its lowest ebb now, anyhow, for not only does Jessie
Macnab become Mrs Lumley within an hour, but I am constrained to
perform the marriage ceremony myself, as well as give her away."

The Highlander here referred to the fact that, for the convenience of
those numerous individuals whose lives were spent in the Great
Nor'-west, far removed at that time from clergymen, churches, and other
civilised institutions, the commissioned gentlemen in the service of the
Hudson's Bay Company were legally empowered to perform the marriage
ceremony.

Of course Jessie regretted much the impossibility of procuring a
minister of any denomination to officiate in that remote corner of the
earth, and had pleaded for delay in order that they might go home and
get