harvest.

* * * * *

Before the next harvest, Hiltonbury bells rang out, and the church was
crowded with glad faces; but there was none more deeply joyful than that
of the lonely woman with silvery hair, who quietly knelt beside the gray
slab, lettered H. C., 1840, convinced that the home and people of him who
lay there would be in trusty hands, when she should join him in his true
inheritance. Her idols set aside, she could with clearer eyes look to
that hope, though in no weariness of earth, no haste to depart, but still
in full strength, ready to work for man's good and God's glory.

Beside her, as usual, was Owen, leaning on his crutch, but eminent in
face and figure as the handsomest man present, and full of animation,
betraying neither pain or regret, but throughout the wedding festivities
showing himself the foremost in mirth, and spurring Hiltonbury on to
rejoicings that made the villagers almost oblivious of the Forest Show.

The saddest face in church was that of the head bridesmaid. Even though
Phoebe was only going as far as the Holt, and Humfrey was much loved,
Bertha's heart was sore with undefined regret for her own blotted past,
and with the feeling of present loss in the sister whose motherly
kindness she had never sufficiently recognized. Bertha knew not how much
gentler and more lovable she herself was growing in that very struggle
with her own sadness, and in her endeavours to be sufficient protectress
for Maria. The two sisters were to remain at the Underwood with Miss
Fennimore, and in her kindness, and in daily intercourse with Phoebe and
Cecily, could hardly fail to be happy. Maria was radiantly glad, in all
the delight of her bridesmaid's adornments and of the school feasting,
and above all in patronizing her pretty little niece, Elizabeth Acton,
the baby bridesmaid.

It was as if allegiance to poor Juliana's dislikes had hitherto kept Sir
Bevil aloof from Phoebe, and deterred him from manifesting his good-will;
but the marriage brought him at last to Beauchamp, kind, grave, military,
and melancholy as ever, and so much wrapped up in his little girl and his
fancied memory of her mother, that Cecily's dislike of long attachments
was confirmed by his aspect; and only her sanguine benevolence was bold
enough to augur his finding a comforter in her cousin Susan.

Poor man! Lady Bannerman had been tormenting him all the morning with
appeals to his own weddin