ad of being shattered was canonized!

"I knowed he'd prove true," she loyally declared. "Despite everything I
jest knowed hit deep down in my heart!"

A pallid thinning of the darkness was discernible over the eastern
ridges as Brother Fulkerson, who had administered his most powerful
restoratives, thrust back his medicine chest. His face became
mysteriously grave as he joined the hands of his daughter and the man
whose fingers were limp in their enfeebled clasp. Across the quilted
four-poster stood Bear Cat Stacy, as erectly motionless as bronze. His
unblinking eyes and lips, schooled into firm stoicism, might have
suggested some young Indian brave going, set of purpose, to his
torture. The lamp flared and sputtered toward the end of its night-long
service and the fire had dwindled to an ashen desolation.

At the foot of the bed, and depressed with a dull sense of awe, was Joe
Sanders, fingering his hat-brim and shifting his weight from foot to
foot.

The old preacher of the hills, ordained in no recognized school of
divinity, had for this occasion put aside the simple formula that the
mountains knew and substituted for it such fragments as he remembered
from the Church of England's more stately ritual. It was a service that
he had heard infrequently and long ago, but it had stirred him with its
solemn beauty and God would forgive any unmeant distortions since the
intent was reverent.

"Dearly Beloved, we're gathered together hyar in ther sight of God
A'mighty an' in the face of this hyar company ... to j'ine tergither
this-hyar man an' this-hyar woman." There exact memory failed him and
his voice broke in a pathetic quaver. Bear Cat Stacy bit his tongue
until he could taste the blood in his mouth as he held his gaze rigidly
fixed above the heads of the little group. God alone knew how bitter
were the broken dreams in his heart, just then.

"I require an' charge ye both, as ye will answer at ther dreadful day
of jedgment--" the holy words were still illusive and memory
tricky--"thet ef either one of ye knows any--any--cause why ye kain't
rightfully be j'ined tergither in matrimony ... ye do now confess hit."

The pause which ensued lay upon the small company with oppressive
weight. Joe Sanders coughed and nervously cleared his throat.

"Wilt thou have this-hyar woman fer thy wedded wife? Wilt thou love
her, comfort her an' keep her in sickness an' in health?"

For a moment there was dead and unresponsive sile