ill, said this:

"Git the Judge, Sandy. Fetch her home to-morrow. Spliced to-morrow.
Sandy, git the Judge to-morrow!"

And "to-morrow" kept coming up the hill and out of the darkness till the
nervous man was half way to the Howling Wilderness.

The Judge was there, a cooler man now, even though it was midsummer. His
shirt was open till his black hairy breast showed through as if it had
been a naked bear-skin.

The Forks came in force to its second wedding, but the Forks, too, was
cooler, and had put aside to some extent its faith and its folly. And
yet it liked Bunker Hill ever so much. Bunker Hill, said the Forks, had
not been the best of women in days gone by, but Bunker Hill had never
deceived.

She stood alone there that day, the day of all days to any woman in the
world, and the boys did not like it at all.

Why had she not asked the Widow to be by her side? Surely she had stood
by the Widow in the day of trouble; why was not the Widow there? And
then they thought about it a little while, and saw how impossible it
was for poor deformed little Bunker Hill to dare to ask the Widow to
come and stand with her at her wedding.

The woman who stood there, about to be made the head of the second
family in the Forks, had nursed the Widow back to life and health, had
seen all the time the line that lay between them, and had not taken a
single step to cross it. When her task was finished she had gone back to
her home. She carried with her the memory and the recollection of a duty
well performed, and felt that it was enough. She had not seen the Widow
any more.

The Judge stood there with the Declaration of Independence, the Statutes
of California, and the marriage ceremony, all under his arm, and ready
to do his office. The sun was pouring down in the open streets. Little
Bunker Hill felt hardly, somehow, that she had a right to be married out
in the open day, in the fresh, sweet air, and under the trees; and
Limber Tim preferred to be married where his partner had been married,
and so it was that they had met in the Howling Wilderness as before. All
was silence now, all were waiting for the Judge to begin. Up in the loft
the mice nibbled away at their endless rations of old boots, and a big
red-headed woodpecker pounded away on the wall back by the chimney
without.

There was a commotion at the door. Then there was a murmur of admiration
and applause.

The men gave way, they pushed and pushed each other back as