Silently and solemnly the little congregation dispersed.  A few lingered, and looked longingly at Draxy, as if they would go back and speak to her.  But she stood with her eyes fixed on the Elder’s face, utterly unconscious of the presence of any other human being.  Even her father dared not break the spell of holy beatitude which rested on her countenance.

“No, no, ma,” he said to Jane, who proposed that they should go back to the pew and walk home with her.  “This ain’t like any other wedding that was ever seen on this earth, unless, maybe, that one in Cana.  And I don’t believe the Lord was any nearer to that bridegroom than He is to this one.”

So Jane and Reuben walked home from church alone, for the first time since they came to Clairvend, and Draxy and her husband followed slowly behind.  The village people who watched them were bewildered by their manner, and interpreted it variously according to their own temperaments.

“You’d ha’ thought now they’d been married years an’ years to look at ’em,” said Eben Hill; “they didn’t speak a word, nor look at each other any more ’n old Deacon Plummer ‘n his wife, who was joggin’ along jest afore ’em.”

Old Ike—­poor, ignorant, loving old Ike, whose tender instinct was like the wistful sagacity of a faithful dog—­read their faces better.  He had hurried out of church and hid himself in the edge of a little pine grove which the Elder and Draxy must pass.

“I’d jest like to see ’em a little longer,” he said to himself half apologetically.  As they walked silently by, old Ike’s face saddened, and at last became convulsed with grief.  Creeping out from beneath the pines, he slowly followed them up the hill, muttering to himself, in the fashion which had grown upon him in his solitary life:—­

“O Lord!  O Lord!  No such looks as them is long for this earth.  O Lord! which is it ye’re goin’ to take?  I reckon it’s the Elder.  I reckon ’tis.  That woman’s goin’ to have her heart broke.  O Lord!  O Lordy me!  I can’t bear the sight on’t!” and he leaped a fence and struck off across the fields towards his house.  He did not shut his eyes that night, but tossed and groaned aloud.  Towards morning he formed a resolution which calmed him somewhat.

“Ef I kin only be right close to ’em till it comes, p’raps I can be of a little use.  Leastways it ’ud be some comfort to try,” he said.

As the Elder and Draxy were sitting at breakfast the next day, they caught sight of the old man’s bent figure walking up and down outside the gate, and stopping now and then irresolutely, as if he would come in, but dared not.

“Why, there’s old Ike,” exclaimed the Elder, “What on earth can he want at this time of day!”

Draxy looked up with a very tender smile, and said:  “I shouldn’t wonder if he wanted just to see how happy you look, Mr. Kinney.  Nobody in this world loves you so well as old Ike does.”

“Oh, Draxy!” said the Elder, reproachfully.