nlimmon (who had not found the heart to
restrain our appetites) marshalled and led us forth, gorged and
torpid, to the church where at eleven o'clock the ceremony was to
take place. Her eyes were red-rimmed as she cast them up towards the
window behind which Mr. Scougall, no doubt, was at that moment
arraying himself: but she commanded a firm step, and even a firm
voice to remark outside the wicket, as she looked up at the
chimney-pots, that Nature had put on her fairest garb.

The day, to be sure, was monstrously hot and stuffy. Not a breath of
wind ruffled the waters of the dock, around the head of which we
trudged to a recently erected church on the opposite shore.
I remember observing, on our way, the dazzling brilliance of its
weathercock.

We found its interior spacious but warm, and the air heavy with the
scent--it comes back to me as I write--of a peculiar sweet oil used
in the lamps. Perhaps Mr. Scougall had calculated that a ceremony so
interesting to him would attract a throng of sightseers; at any rate,
we were packed into a gallery at the extreme western end of the
church, and in due time watched the proceedings from that respectful
distance and across a gulf of empty pews.

--That is to say, some of us watched. I have no doubt that Miss
Plinlimmon did, for instance; nay, that her attention was riveted.
Otherwise I cannot explain what followed.

On the previous night I had gone to bed almost supperless, as usual.
I had come, as usual, ravenous to breakfast, and for once I had
sated, and more than sated, desire. For years after, though hungry
often enough in the course of them, I never thought with longing upon
cold veal or strawberries, nor have I ever recovered an unmitigated
appetite for either.

It is certain, then, that even before the ceremony began--and the
bride arrived several minutes late--I slumbered on the back bench of
the gallery. The evidence of six boys seated near me agrees that, at
the moment when Mr. Scougall produced the ring, I arose quietly, but
without warning, and made my exit by the belfry door. They supposed
that I was taken ill; they themselves were feeling more or less
uncomfortable.

The belfry stairway, by which we had reached the door of our gallery,
wound upward beyond it to the top of the tower, and gave issue by a
low doorway upon the dwarf battlements, from which sprang a spire
some eighty feet high. This spire was, in fact, a narrowing octagon,
its sides h