rred.

XXI

The End of a Honeymoon

Our high-noon wedding was in all respects as quiet and unostentatious
as we had planned it. The little brown box of a church, bare of
decorations because there was neither time nor the group of vicariously
interested young people to trim it, was only a few doors from the
Everton cottage, and we walked to it; Phineas Everton and I on each
side of the plank walk, and Polly between us with an arm for each.

Barrett had told a few of his friends, so there were enough people in
the pews to make it look a little less than clandestine. Barrett acted
as usher in one aisle and Gifford, very much out of his element but
doggedly faithful, did his part in the other. There was even a bit of
music; the Wagner as we went in, and a few bars of the Mendelssohn to
speed us as we went out. The good-byes were said at the church-door,
and the only abnormal thing about the leave-taking was Barrett's gift
to the bride, pressed into her hand as we were getting into the
carriage to go to the railroad station--a silver filigree hand-bag
stuffed heavy with five- and ten-dollar gold pieces, "to be blown in on
the wedding journey," as he phrased it.

We had agreed not to tell anybody where we were going; for that matter,
I didn't even tell Polly until after we had started. Turning southward
from Colorado Springs and stopping overnight in Trinidad, we took a
morning train on the Santa Fe and vanished into the westward void. A
day and a night beyond this we were debarking at Williams, Arizona, and
in due time reached our real hiding-place; a comfortable ranch house
within easy riding distance of that most majestic of immensities, the
Grand Canyon of the Colorado. It was Polly's idea; the choice of a
quiet retreat as against the social attractions of the great hotel on
the canyon's brink. We had each other, and that was sufficient.

Of that heavenly month, spent in a world far removed from all the
turmoil and distractions of modern civilization, there is nothing to be
here written down. For those who have drained a similar cup of
blissful happiness for themselves there is no need; and those who have
not would not understand. What I recall most vividly now is a single
unnerving incident; unnerving, I say, though at the time it was quickly
drowned in the flowing tide of joy.

It chanced upon a day toward the month's end when we had broken the
heavenly sequence of quiet days by riding a pair of