'll see if you'll do it."

"We shall see," said the bride.

They faced each other motionless. Then Farallone, his eyes glorious with
excitement and passion, his arms open, moved toward her one slow,
deliberate step.

"Wait," he cried suddenly. "This is too good for _them_." He jerked his
thumb toward the groom and me. "This is a sight for gods--not jackasses.
Go down to the river," he said to us. "If you hear a shot come back. If
you hear a scream--then as you value your miserable hides--get!"

We did not move.

The bride, her voice tense and high-pitched, turned to us.

"Do as you're told," she cried, "or I shall ask this man to throw you
over the cliff." She stamped her foot.

"And this man," said Farallone, "will do as he's told."

There was nothing for it. We left them alone in the meadow and descended
the cliff to the river. And there we stood for what seemed the ages of
ages, listening and trembling.

A faint, far-off detonation, followed swiftly by louder and fainter
echoes, broke suddenly upon the rushing noises of the river. We
commenced feverishly to scramble back up the cliff. Half-way to the top
we heard another shot, a second later a third, and after a longer
interval, as if to put a quietus upon some final show of life--a fourth.

A nebulous drift of smoke hung above the meadow.

Farallone lay upon his face at the bride's feet. The groom sprang to her
side and threw a trembling arm about her.

"Come away," he cried, "come away."

But the bride freed herself gently from his encircling arm, and her eyes
still bent upon Farallone----

"Not till I have buried my dead," she said.

HOLDING HANDS

At first nobody knew him; then the Hotchkisses knew him, and then it
seemed as if everybody had always known him. He had run the gauntlet of
gossip and come through without a scratch. He was first noticed sitting
in the warm corner made by Willcox's annex and the covered passage that
leads to the main building. Pairs or trios of people, bareheaded, their
tennis clothes (it was a tennis year) mostly covered from view by clumsy
coonskin coats, passing Willcox's in dilapidated runabouts drawn by
uncurried horses, a nigger boy sitting in the back of each, his thin
legs dangling, had glimpses of him through the driveway gap in the tall
Amor privet hedge that is between Willcox's and the road. These pairs or
trios having seen would break in upon whatever else they may have been
saying to make such