Next morning a clear, bright day rose upon the village.  Ivo was dressed by his mother betimes in a new jacket of striped Manchester cloth, with buttons which he took for silver, and a newly-washed pair of leathern breeches.  He was to carry the crucifix.  Gretchen, Ivo’s eldest sister, took him by the hand and led him into the street, “so as to have room in the house.”  Having enjoined upon him by no means to go back, she returned hastily.  Wherever he came he found the men standing in knots in the road.  They were but half dressed for the festival, having no coats on, but displaying their dazzling white shirt-sleeves.  Here and there women or girls were to be seen running from house to house without bodices, and with their hair half untied.  Ivo thought it cruel in his sister to have pushed him out of the house as she had done.  He would have been delighted to have appeared like the grown folks,—­first in negligee, and then in full dress amid the tolling of bells and the clang of trumpets; but he did not dare to return, or even to sit down anywhere, for fear of spoiling his clothes.  He went through the village almost on tiptoe.  Wagon after wagon rumbled in, bringing farmers and farmers’ wives from abroad; at the houses people welcomed them, and brought chairs to assist them in getting down.  All the world looked as exultingly quiet and glad as a community preparing to receive a hero who had gone forth from their midst and was returning after a victory.  From the church to the hill-top the road was strewn with flowers and grass, which sent forth aromatic odors.  The squire was seen coming out of Christian the tailor’s, and only covered his head when he found himself in the middle of the street.  Soges had a new sword, brightly japanned and glittering in the sun.

The squire’s wife soon followed, leading her daughter Barbara, who was but six years old, by the hand.  Barbara was dressed in bridal array.  She wore the veil and the wreath upon her head, and a beautiful gown.  As an immaculate virgin, she was intended to represent the bride of the young clergyman, the Church.

At the first sound of the bell the people in shirt-sleeves disappeared as if by magic.  They retired to their houses to finish their toilet:  Ivo went on to the church.

Amid the ringing of all the bells, the procession at last issued from the church-door.  The pennons waved, the band of music brought from Horb struck up, and the audible prayers of the men and women mingled with the sound.  Ivo, with the schoolmaster at his side, took the lead, carrying the crucifix.  On the hill the altar was finely decorated; the chalices and the lamps and the spangled dresses of the saints flashed in the sun, and the throng of worshipers covered the common and the adjoining fields as far as the eye could reach.  Ivo hardly took courage to look at the “gentleman,” meaning the young clergyman, who, in his gold-laced robe, and bare head crowned with a golden wreath, ascended the steps of