“Something the most absurd you ever listened to.  He proposed, if other people would furnish the money, to establish a public coach from this city to Boston, to run as often as once a week, and, after the first expense, to support itself from the travellers it carries; each one is to pay a few shillings.  Where did he expect the travellers to come from?  Gentlemen would never travel in other than private conveyances?” And these representatives of conservatism threw back their heads and laughed over the absurdity of the lightning express in embryo.  Governor Wentworth standing before the fire was commenting on some of Governor Shirley’s measures, giving his own judgment on the matter, with a directness more bold than wise, and the circle about him were discussing affairs with the freedom of speech that Americans have always used in political affairs, when a stir of expectation behind them made them take breath, and glance at the person entering the room.  It was the minister.

“He has come, you see,” whispered the lady to her neighbor of the forebodings.  After greeting him, the group about the fire went back to their discussions.  It had been the good parson’s horse then, which they had heard tearing up the road in hot haste; they had not dreamed that so much speed was in the nag.  But Master Shurtleff was probably a little late and had been afraid of keeping the bride and groom waiting for him.  Master and Mistress Archdale were there; all the company, indeed, but the four members of it most important that morning, Katie and Stephen, the bridesmaid, Mistress Royal, and the best man, a young friend of Archdale’s.  After a few moments in which conversation lagged through expectancy, the door opened again.

“Ah! here they are.  No, only one, alone.  How strange!”

Every eye was turned upon Elizabeth Royal as she came in with a face too concentrated upon the suggestion under which she was acting to see anything about her.  Without sign of recognition she glanced from one to another, until her eyes fell upon good Parson Shurtleff watching her with a gentle wonder in his face.  It was for him that she had been looking.  She went up to him immediately, and laid a tremulous hand upon his arm.  She tried to smile, but the effort was so plain and her face so pale that an anxiety diffused itself through the assembly; it was felt that her presence here alone showed that something had happened, and her expression, that it was something bad.  She did not seem even to hear the minister’s kind greeting, and she was as little moved by the wonder and scrutiny about her as if she had been alone with him.  At Mistress Archdale’s reiterated question if Katie were ill, she shook her head in silence.  Some thought held her in its grasp, some fear that she was struggling to speak.