The light fell brightly into the little church, the trees outside were rustling, and now and then a gentle breeze coming in by a broken window-pane stirred the white scarf with which the angel above the baptismal font was decked, or the tinsel of the wreaths which, having been taken from the coffins of the maidens who had died, were used to decorate the surrounding pillars.

Bride and bridegroom were gone, the bridal procession was gone, but still the peaceful little church was not 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 heavenly a moment should pass by two such stolid souls.