that was how the Father found us when he turned to put the
holy wafer on our tongues.

The wind must have risen higher while I was in the church, for when I
was returning across the fields it lashed my skirts about my legs so
that I could scarcely walk. A mist had come down and made a sort of
monotonous movement in the mountains where they touched the vague line
of the heavy sky.

I should be afraid to say that Nature was still trying to speak to me in
her strange inarticulate voice, but I cannot forget that a flock of
yearlings, which had been sheltering under a hedge, followed me bleating
to the last fence, and that the moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock
was the last sound I heard as I re-entered the house.

Everything there was running like a mill-race by this time. The servants
were flying to and fro, my cousins were calling downstairs in accents of
alarm, Aunt Bridget was answering them in tones of vexation, and my
father was opening doors with a heavy push and closing them with a
clash.

They were all so suddenly pacified when I appeared that it flashed upon
me at the moment that they must have thought I had run away.

"Goodness gracious me, girl, where have you been?" said Aunt Bridget.

I told her, and she was beginning to reproach me for not ordering round
the carriage, instead of making my boots and stockings damp by traipsing
across the grass, when my father said:

"That'll do, that'll do! Change them and take a snack of something. I
guess we're due at Holmtown in half an hour."

I ate my breakfast standing, the car was brought round, and by eight
o'clock my father and I arrived at the house of the High Bailiff, who
had to perform the civil ceremony of my marriage according to the
conditions required by law.

The High Bailiff was on one knee before the fire in his office, holding
a newspaper in front of it to make it burn.

"Nobody else here yet?" asked my father.

"Traa dy liooar" (time enough), the High Bailiff muttered.

He was an elderly man of intemperate habits who spent his nights at the
"Crown and Mitre," and was apparently out of humour at having been
brought out of bed so early.

His office was a room of his private house. It had a high desk, a stool
and a revolving chair. Placards were pinned on the walls, one over
another, and a Testament, with the binding much worn, lay on a table.
The place looked half like a doctor's consulting room, and half like a
small police court.