yet entirely deserted. Two
young people had remained inside of it, without knowing of each other's
presence; and this is how it happened. The Hunter, when the
wedding-party entered the church, had separated from them and quietly
gone up a flight of stairs to a gallery. There, unseen by the rest, he
sat down on a stool all alone by himself, his back to the people and to
the altar. He buried his face in his hands, but that he could not long
endure to do; his cheek and brow were too hot. The hymn with its solemn
tones cooled the heat like falling dew; he thanked God that finally,
finally the supreme happiness had been granted to him:

In thy sadness, in thy laughter,
Thou art thine own by law of love! * * *

A little child had crept up to him out of curiosity; he gently grasped
his hand and caressed it. Then he started to give him money, did not do
it, but pressed him against his breast and kissed his forehead. And when
the boy, a bit frightened by his hot caress, moved toward the stairs, he
slowly led him down lest he should fall. Then he returned to his seat
and heard nothing of the sermon, nothing of the noise which followed it.
He was sunk in deep and blissful dreams which revealed to him his
beautiful mother and his white castle on the green hillside and himself
and somebody else in the castle.

Lisbeth, embarrassed in her strange attire, had bashfully walked along
behind the bride. Oh, she thought, just when the good man thinks I am
always natural I must wear borrowed clothes. She longed to have back her
own. She heard the peasants behind her talking about her in a whisper.
The aristocratic gentleman, who met the procession in front of the
church, looked at her critically for a long time through his lorgnette.
All that she was obliged to endure, when she had just been so
beautifully extolled in verse, when her heart was overflowing with
joyful delight. Half dazed she entered the church, where she made up her
mind to desert the procession on the way back, in order to avoid
becoming again the object of conversation or facetious remarks, which
now for a quarter of an hour had been far from her thoughts. She too
heard but little of the sermon, earnestly as she strove to follow the
discourse of her respected clerical friend. And when the rings were
exchanged, the matter-of-course expression on the faces of the bridal
pair aroused a peculiar emotion in her--a mixture of sadness, envy, and
quiet resentment that so h