The parson of Foxville was a very old man--almost too old to fish for trout.
Crawford led him a pace aside, leaving Miss Castle, somewhat frightened, knee-deep in the purple iris.
Then the old parson came toddling to her and took her hand, and peered at her with his aged eyes, saying, "You are quite mad, my child, and very lovely, and very, very young. So I think, after all, you would be much safer if you were married."
Somebody encircled her waist; she turned and looked into the eyes of her lover, and still looking at him, she laid her hands in his.
A wedding amid the iris, all gray with the hovering, misty wings of moths--that was her fate--with the sky a canopy of fire above her, and the curlew calling through the kindling dusk, and the blue processional of the woods lining the corridors of the coming night.
And at last the aged parson kissed her and shook hands with her husband and shambled away across the meadows.
Slowly northward through the dusk stole the canoe once more, bearing the bride of an hour, her head on her husband's knees. The stars came out to watch them; a necklace of bubbles trailed in the paddle's wake, stringing away, twinkling in the starlight.
Slowly through the perfumed gloom they glided, her warm head on his knees, his eyes fixed on the vague water ahead.
A stag crashed through the reeds ashore; the June fawn stared with eyes like rubies in the dark.
Onward, onward, through the spell-bound forest; and at last the windows of the house glimmered, reflected in the water.
Garcide and Crawford awaited them on the veranda as they came up, rising in chilling silence, ignoring the offered hands of greeting.
"I've a word to say to you," snarled the Hon. John Garcide, in his ward's ear--"and another word for your fool of an aunt!"
She shrank back against her husband, amazed and hurt. "What do you mean?" she stammered; "we--we are married. Will you not speak to my--my husband?"
A silence, too awful to last, was broken by a hoarse laugh.
"You're all right, Jim," said the elder Crawford, slowly. "Ophir Steel won't slip through your fingers when I'm under the sod. Been married long, Jim?"
"And of course what I buy is my own," continued Burleson, patiently. "No man here will question that, I suppose?"