ar to see you
as Hal's wife, but now it would kill me. Good-bye.

Jerrie read this note with wet eyes up in her room, and then passed it
to Harold, to whom she told of that episode under the butternut tree,
when Billy asked her to be his wife.

'Poor Billy! I am awful sorry for him, but I can't let him have you,
Jerrie,' Harold said, passing the note back to her, and kissing her
tenderly, as he added: 'That is my last kiss for Jerrie Tracy, my little
girl of the carpet-bag. When I kiss you again, you will be my wife.'

'Come, children, we are waiting,' came with startling distinctness from
Arthur at the foot of the stairs, and then Harold and Jerrie went down
to the parlor, where they were soon made one, Arthur giving the bride
away, and behaving pretty well under the circumstances.

He had been very flighty the day before, insisting that Jerrie should be
married in white, with a blue ribbon on her bonnet, just as Gretchen had
been, and when she reminded him of Maude's recent death, he replied:

'Well, Gretchen will wear colors if you do not.'

And again he brought out and laid upon his bed the dress bought in Paris
years before, and which had been waiting for Gretchen on that stormy
night when he heard the wild cry of the dying woman above the wintery
gale. She was with him again in fancy, and when he went out to the
carriage which was to carry him to the cottage, he stepped back and
stood a moment by the door as if to let some one enter before him, and
all during the ceremony those nearest to him heard him whispering to
himself, 'I, Arthur, take thee, Gretchen,' and so forth; but when it was
over he came to himself and seemed perfectly rational, as he kissed his
daughter and shook hands with his son-in-law, to whom he gave a check
for ten thousand dollars, saying as he did so, that young men must have
a little spending money.

It was a very pleasant wedding, and every one seemed happy, even to
Dick, whose spirits, however, were rather too gay to be quite natural,
and whose voice shook just a little as he called Jerrie Mrs. Hasting,
and told her he hoped to see her in Paris in the spring as he thought of
going over there with Nina to join the Raymonds.

'Oh, I hope you will! Nothing could make me so happy as to meet you
there,' Jerrie said, looking at him with an expression which told him
she was thinking of the pines and was sorry for him.

The newly married pair were going directly to New York, where Art