, crowed in victory. Before he had done
the vanguard of the groom's friends were upon us, pell-mell, all in the
finest of backwoods regalia,--new hunting shirts, trimmed with bits of
color, and all armed to the teeth--scalping knife, tomahawk, and all.
Nor had Chauncey Dike forgotten the scalp of the brave who leaped at him
out of the briers at Neowee.

Polly Ann was radiant in a white linen gown, woven and sewed by her own
hands. It was not such a gown as Mrs. 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