Next day Charles was busy. A special license had to be procured, and Louise must procure her simple wadding array. The facilities of to-day did not exist then, and the impatient young lover chafed considerably at the delay involved. But in due time the wedding came off, with the dear old doctor as guardian to give the bride away. The village was in a state of seething excitement; the labourers left their work, their wives left their household tasks, and all discussed with an eagerness that was amazingly different to their usual stolidity of demeanour the romantic happenings in their midst. Then, when the newly-married pair had returned to the doctor’s roomy house, and the villagers had drifted reluctantly homeward again, the ripples of unwonted disturbance gradually smoothed out and subsided. Charles and his wife sat side by side in the doctor’s parlour as the evening shadows fell, their benefactor’s glowing face confronting them, and the knowledge that half his home was theirs removing all anxiety for the immediate future from their minds.
They sat thus, holding each other’s hands in silence, until Louise, looking up in her husband’s face, said, “Charles, let us go and see George. I feel I must before I sleep.” And Charles answered, “Yes, dear; it was in my heart too to do so, but I’m glad you spoke first.” So, gently disregarding the remonstrances of the doctor, who protested that the morrow would be a more appropriate time, they departed, warmly wrapped up against the piercing cold, and carrying a lantern. As they passed from the village on to the shoulder of the swelling down a few soft snow-flakes began to fall....
All through that night the large round flakes fell heavily incessantly, until, when the pale cold dawn straggled through the leaden clouds, the whole country was deep buried in a smooth garment of spotless white. For three days the terrible, silent fall went on. The poor folk almost starved in their homes, and all traffic throughout the country was stopped. When at last communications could be opened, the old doctor, his heart aching with worry and suspense, made his way, accompanied by my father, to Pertwood Farm. There they found only a few hastily scribbled sheets of paper on the kitchen table. They contained words to the effect that George had been startled by a long wailing cry at a late hour on the night of the first snow. He had gone to the door, and there, on the very spot where she had lain years before, was his lost love. But this time she was dead. He had buried her by the side of his parents, and hoped to join the party soon.