priest endeavored to persuade her to the marriage.
After a sermon from the texts Deuteronomy xxi., 10-13: "When thou goest
forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered
them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, and seest among
the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire that thou wouldest
have her to thy wife, then she ... shall remain in thine house, and thou
shalt be her husband and she shall be thy wife," and 1 Timothy v., 14:
"I will, therefore, that the younger women marry," etc., he addressed
her personally before the congregation. Sally, remembering how her
random shaft had in time past stirred up Sergeant Wright to an
expression of his feelings, and having in mind a bashful lover, a
certain shock-headed Ebenezer Nims, more generally known as "the Nims
boy," for whom she had an inexplicable good will and who had been
"captivated with her," as the ancient chronicle stated with more truth
than it knew, answered adroitly that she had no ill will toward marriage
as a state, but that she preferred to wed with one of her own people,
and requested that "inquisition should be made" whether there were not
one willing to become her husband among the captives. A cold shudder ran
down Sergeant Wright's spinal column. Who could the child mean but him?
Had she misinterpreted his brotherly care and affection? And yet she
knew of his love for her sister. It was with a great sigh of relief that
he saw "the Nims boy" suddenly start from his seat, a timid, shrinking
boy no longer, but transformed on the instant by the girl's challenge to
as brave a knight as ever tilted in tourney for lady's love, and running
the gauntlet of the eyes of friend and foe, place himself at her side.

The wily Jesuit was caught in his own toils; he acknowledged it by
marrying them upon the spot, and adding by way of benediction to the
usual Latin formula--"Mulier hominis confusio est."

When the younger sister marries before the elder it is the custom, in
some parts of the country, to bring in the brass kettle and make the
slighted one dance in it. Neither sister nor kettle were present on this
occasion, but the time was not far distant when both would be found
again. The captives were to be returned. Sergeant Wright had believed
all along, in spite of the mountains of difficulty in the way, that this
would be; and yet he said to himself on that homeward march, "Though I
have all faith, so that I could remo