s. Temple, Nick's mother, would have
worn, and yet she was to me an hundred times more beautiful than
that lady in all her silks. Peeping out from under it were the little
blue-beaded moccasins which Tom himself had brought across the mountains
in the bosom of his hunting shirt. Polly Ann was radiant, and yet at
times so rapturously shy that when the preacher announced himself ready
to tie the knot she ran into the house and hid in the cupboard--for
Polly Ann was a child of nature. Thence, coloring like a wild rose,
she was dragged by a boisterous bevy of girls in linsey-woolsey to
the spreading maple of the forest that stood on the high bank over the
stream. The assembly fell solemn, and not a sound was heard save the
breathing of Nature in the heyday of her time. And though I was happy,
the sobs rose in my throat. There stood Polly Ann, as white now as the
bleached linen she wore, and Tom McChesney, tall and spare and broad, as
strong a figure of a man as ever I laid eyes on. God had truly made that
couple for wedlock in His leafy temple.

The deep-toned words of the preacher in prayer broke the stillness.
They were made man and wife. And then began a day of merriment, of
unrestraint, such as the backwoods alone knows. The feast was spread
out in the long grass under the trees--sides of venison, bear meat,
corn-pone fresh baked by Mrs. McChesney and Polly Ann herself, and all
the vegetables in the patch. There was no stint, either, of maple beer
and rum and "Black Betty," and toasts to the bride and groom amidst
gusts of laughter "that they might populate Kaintuckee." And Polly Ann
would have it that I should sit by her side under the maple.

The fiddlers played, and there were foot races and shooting matches. Ay,
and wrestling matches in the severe manner of the backwoods between the
young bucks, more than one of which might have ended seriously were it
not for the high humor of the crowd. Tom McChesney himself was in most
of them, a hot favorite. By a trick he had learned in the Indian country
he threw Chauncey Dike (no mean adversary) so hard that the backwoods
dandy lay for a moment in sleep. Contrary to the custom of many, Tom was
not in the habit of crowing on such occasions, nor did he even smile as
he helped Chauncey to his feet. But Polly Ann knew, and I knew, that he
was thinking of what Chauncey had said to her.

So the long summer afternoon wore away into twilight, and the sun fell
behind the blue ridges